Services like EA Access are the future, but there are unanswered questions
Ed considers the promise and pitfalls of EA’s game subscription platform.
In hindsight, there’s nothing surprising about the recently announced EA Access, a subscription service for selected EA titles that’s exclusive (right now) to the Xbox One. EA and has been building up to this for years, in all likelihood: it’s just an extension of the well-aged Season Pass concept, where you pay upfront for a series of DLC packs at a modest overall discount. Microsoft and Sony have also paved the way with their Games with Gold and PSN+ services, which entitle paying subscribers to a number of free games a month. And all that’s on top of the much-written-about general drift away from the old school one-product-one-purchase model, a trend epitomised by Netflix and Spotify.