Aeolus451 said:
It's not so much about the immediate percieved value you get from EA access now but about how it affects you later down the line. EA has a really bad reputation and they're already confirming some gamers' fears about how they would use their service. Locking content or access to their games behind a paywall/service. If that is successful, more publishers and developers will use a service like EA's to lock content behind. PS Now hasn't been used like that because sony doesn't make the vast majority of content or own it. Also, sony is the proverbial gamer friendly company.
I don't know about you but I rather just be able to buy the exact games I want to play, maybe buy dlc for whatever one and just play it. That's just me but I can understand if someone wants to rent, stream or subscribe for games for the value. That's why more centralized services are better for gamers that want something like that. They don't own the vast majority of content or games and therefore can't control any content beyond what they are licensed for.
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Well the entire industry has been putting content behind paywalls. 3rd parties generally do it in the form of DLC. I'd argue its been successful because we see plenty of it. We also see content being locked on certain platforms because a 1st party threw money at them. Something the gamer friendly Sony has done on numerous occasions.
1st parties have paywalls called PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold. People actually believed Sony would never charge for online play, but PS Plus from the get go was a stepping stone to doing that and I predicted it years before PS4 launched.
Centralized services can potentially be more expensive and don't give much options. Hence, with PS Plus and XBLG you get whatever games they choose. Also, you can miss out on "free games" because you weren't a subscriber at the time or forgot to download a game when it was available. There is no backlog downloads for games you missed on those services.
PS Now has a lot of games from various publishers. But the library won't appeal to most gamers and very expensive to have it annually.
With EA Access you know exactly what games you'll have access to for $30 a year. Any paywalls you're concerned about will probably be done through PS+/XBLG and DLC.
Lastly, what other publishers would/could create a service like EA Access? Most publishers don't create enough games to do something like it. The only other companies that could potentially do it are Ubisoft, 2K, and MAYBE Capcom down the road if they put out a lot of content this gen. Activision wouldn't because their library beyond CoD is mostly shit.
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