I don't know the history of EA and Sony. I owned a PS3 and an Xbox 360 last gen and I don't really remember any favoritism. And even if there were, why would it be any worse than Grand Theft Auto giving M$ a one year exclusive to GTAIV dlc or Call of Duty giving Xbox players first access to certain content?

Also, does Sony want EA Access? Does EA want their service on PlayStation 4? I legitimately do not know. Somebody educate me with some facts because this thread isn't doing it.

What I do know is that I'm on week two of a month long free trial and when it runs out, I'm signing up. Need For Speed franchise, Battlefield franchise, Plants vs Zombies franchise, Mass Effect franchise, Start Wars Battlefront, Unravel, Dragon Age, etc are too much to pass up for less than the price of a burger a month.

You don't need to try and sell me that BS 'service' from EA. I have origin on PC, so if I ever felt the need to have EA access I would purchase it.

Now on your question, how does it negatively affect me? Well let's put it this way, I believe it is predatory of any company to artificially withold the release of a game in order to milk extra money from the people who are excited for that game to come out and even pre-ordered it. Also in a game like Battlefield waiting a week after release to begin playing it means you're already at a disadvantage against people who managed to unlock a ton of weapons in the week prior.

I do not like this practice, so I don't support it with my money. I don't want to have a situation in which every big publisher things they can have a service like this and we'd be stuck either having 2 tiers of customers. Sure it might not be a big deal to have the next Fifa released 1 week earlier, but what if story heavy games like Mass Effect and such have this same treatment? Now all of a sudden, there is no safe place on the internet with tons of people spoiling the game to those who 'have' to wait an extra week to play it.

The main point I was trying to make is, Sony has full control of their ecosystem, and if they deem deterimental to their services to have EA access, they are 100% in their right to not allow it. They were transparent about it from the beginning, so not 1 person who bought a Playstation was 'robbed' of this service.

Your post seems level headed and your explained your reasons well. I'll respond point by point. Before I do, I'll just say that i respect your opinion on the matter.

1.) I never thought EA Access had value until I tried it. I'm the kind of person that prefers to own a game rather than "rent" them. It wasn't until recently that I warmed up to the idea of PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold "free games". I understand you're happy with your current options. I was happy with mine. I can still appreciate the fact that there might be some gamers that play solely on PS4 that would be happy with a service like EA Access. Even if it were another company that offered it in PlayStation (ie: Activision) it wouldn't be EA. Even if their offerings are better, it still wouldn't be the same.

It's a moot point, though. As it stands, there isn't an EA Access on PS4 and there's not going to be. 

2.) To my knowledge, EA let players play 10 hours before the game released. There's a big difference between 10 hours and a whole week! That's basically the difference between people who went to a midnight launch and people who waited until the next morning to pick up a pre order. And even then, it had to be digital. Not a huge advantage, in my opinion.

Conversely, Gears of War 4 let people who paid extra for a digital version play the game a full four days earlier! It didn't ruin things.

3.) I agree. Sony has full control of their ecosystem. I also think that people who like games from a particular company would love EA Access or something similar if they were more educated on what it did. I admit it. I didn't know. Now I do. If there was a "Sony Access" that allowed $10 off on upcoming Sony games, and also let players download Ratchet and Clank, Gravity Rush, ND Collection, etc, wouldn't that sound great?

But, as you said, you don't support such practices and I respect that. We can only speak for ourselves but clearly, you can see why other people might find it enticing, right? And with the feature being entirely optional and inexpensive, you can see why it doesn't really hurt anyone or give an unfair advantage.

I appreciate your point of view on this, and on principle I believe EA should be able to have this service on the platforms that accept it. Right now that means Xbox and PC. One of things I'm arguing is this notion pushed by several people, that somehow Sony has some special obligation to open the doors in their platform for EA access and for that reason users are somehow being stolen of something.

I actually enjoy several EA published games and Battlefield is one of my most played games all year every year (on PC ofc), so it's not like I'm ignoring they have some quality titles.

Also I have subscriptions in game access services like PS Now. In this case I do it simply because there's a ton of PS3 games I want to play from time to time and don't want to be dragging an ancient system everytime . Now if Sony started giving me special access (early access) to new games just because I have that service I would also be pissed with it on the principle alone. There's no reason why I should get to play Last of Us 2 a few days earlier than Billy Bob down the street just because I'm also paying for an aditional service. That would be dirty as fuck and a slippery slope for the same type of shit to start happen more and more. It makes even less sense now that the goods are digital, so we know they aren't giving early access to some people due to low product availability.

So on a personal level, I'm glad you're enjoying the service you paid for, but I'm kind of glad that Sony on a leadership position is not giving in to those practices. Will it change in the future if it makes financial sense for them? Maybe, but I sure hope not. In any case I can only vote with my wallet, so if Sony and EA agreed to have this available I would simply not get it.

Having said all this, if EA would end that early access perk for their games, then I probably wouldn't have anything against it.

d21lewis said

Burnout Paradise is one of the "free" games this month. There was a free NBA 2K weekend recently. I think Titanfall 2 was free for a weekend, too (on a different note, Call of Duty should be free for a few days soon, too). 

I can say what I suppose.

At the time EA Access was started EA put MS and Sony to bid and MS won, so Sony just made that remark out of spite after losing.

Or the even more plausible. EA demanded that most of the cut made from the games on EA Access discount plan to be made to EA because it would be their game and their service. So you get free games on EA Access that would compete with the sale of PSN and also the discounts that when made through EA Access wouldn't be made on PSN.

So altough it isn't less value to PS customers to have EA Access it almost certainly is less money to Sony.