Seriously though, EA Access is a good deal. A £20 a year subscription to play some top quality titles? How could you say no? Between Peggle 2, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, EA UFC and Battlefield 4, along with a 10% discount on all EA related purchases (including micro-transactions, good news for all you Ultimate Team players), you’ve got some insane value for money here, and the deal keeps getting better: NBA Live 15 and Madden 15 have just been added to The Vault, a collection of games you can play just for the price of subscription.
Granted, this kind of deal might be tailored more towards a sports fan, given EA’s vice-like grip on most things that involve the words “sport” or “competition” or “athlete”, but you also have to take into consideration the amount of franchises that EA have their fingers in. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Star Wars: Battlefront, SSX, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge… Hell, even a longshot like Burnout; my point is that EA Access can only get better with time.
But I’m not writing this article as a final boarding call for the Hype Train to Grand EA Station. No, I wanted to open up some kind of discussion about the business model EA is offering. Could the EA Access framework be adopted by other companies in the future? And who would those companies be?
It’s worth mentioning now that this strategy in particular simply cannot be adopted by everyone. The reason why it works for EA is because they have the correct balance between established games and upcoming IPs, coupled with the perfect price tag. You could argue that no one would be able to offer a competitive subscription model similar to EA Access, with the exception of Ubisoft, as they also have a vast collection of franchises that could sustain such a system.
We’re talking about Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Trials, Rayman, Just Dance, Rainbow Six and new IP The Division, and that’s just what’s been established for the current gen consoles. Throw in some new games from Driver, Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs (assuming they haven’t abandoned it), and ladies and gentlemen, we have a contender for a new subscription service, and a new purpose for uPLay!
But maybe this doesn’t have to be limited to companies. Maybe a game franchise could get in on the act. One that releases yearly and has more DLC than you thought possible… Say hi to Call of Duty!
Think about it: you offer a yearly subscription at around the £30 mark, which would include access to every Call of Duty game, including the latest release at the time, early access to the DLC which you can buy at a 33% discount, some bonus weapons, skins, maybe even an exclusive map, and I believe Activision would enter Scrooge McDuck levels of obscene wealth. It’s less “cash cow”, more a herd of prime beef.
The loyal fan base would cherish a service like this, and it also gives Activision a means of access to their key demographic. I’m not even a big Call of Duty fan, but even I’d find this a tantalising prospect.
But perhaps the subscription ideas shouldn’t just come from EA Access. How about a service like LootCrate? Yeah, I’m getting a little bit far-fetched with this one, but give me a chance to explain myself.
LootCrate is basically exactly what it says on the tin: a crate filled with loot, specifically “geeky” loot. The catch is that each month is based on a particular theme: Fear, Heroes, and Retro are all previous examples. How does this apply to videogame based subscriptions, you might ask? “I’m bloody getting to it!” I would reply. Taking the idea of a different theme each month, Xbox Live and PlayStation+ could offer subscriptions based solely on a type of genre.
“Hey, do you like to play fighting games?! For £10 a year, you can receive a trial of a different fighting game every month, and if you like the game, you can buy it for a cool discount. But that’s not all! We offer services for lots of different genres, including First Person Shooters, Driving Games, Sandbox Adventures, and even our Indie Games! Don’t miss out!” Or at least, that’s roughly how the pitch might go down.
However, I suppose the big question isn't what companies could adopt this, or what structure would it adhere to, but should there be an increase in services of this type? What kind of precedent would that set?
Gamers love getting a good deal, and models like EA Access offer such a deal, and with the introduction of additional subscriptions, gamers would be allowed to indulge in their preferred franchises, but surely the profitability of gaming would suffer as a result? EA Access works for both gamers and EA as only older or cheaper games are featured in the Vault.
Imagine getting new, triple-A releases for the price of subscription? Sounds good, right, but think long term here. EA would receive less money, even though the same, if not, more people would be playing the game, meaning that they have less money to produce more of what you love. It’s a downward spiral, of which EA Access teeters on the precipice. Just look at Games with Gold. It’s either old games, or low budget indie titles, where the amount of money to be made is considerably decreased.
So what’s the answer here? EA Access is a great concept, maybe even an experiment in distributing games to new audiences, and I think they’ve found the magic formula of discounting new games and making the older games free, but that’s where it should stay
. The moment a new service comes along and undercuts EA by offering the latest games for the price of subscription, the plug must be pulled.
I’m interested to hear what you think. Yes, you, the people. The people who have either stumbled randomly onto my humble blogging site and are now desperately clawing for the exit button, or the friends that I have incessantly pestered to “read my blog”. Are subscription models viable? What about my suggestions? Do you have any of your own? Sound off below, and I’ll see you next time.
I think you’re right, in that I wouldn’t be surprised to see EA Access develop into something of a trend for companies lucky enough to have back-catalogues like this. Then again, now that a lot of games are just reskinned, reconfigured ‘retro’ games (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, et cetera) I can also see it being used as an excuse to do minimal work on classics and use them to entice gamers into subscribing to their version of EA Access.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is more likely to work for companies who truly take advantage of the PC market, rather than a console fanbase. This might just be the PC Master Racist in me talking, but I can see companies like Paradox, Creative Assembly, or even whoever the Hell owns the Sierra back catalogue now, making a much bigger success out of a subscription service like this than a console-heavy company.
I suppose it isn’t too big a step from doing a massive developer sale on Steam, or a developer-specific Humble Bundle, for example. Hell, I’d pay £10 a month if I got a steady release of re-jiggered versions of the early Empire Earths or Neverwinter Nights or Baldur’s Gates!
Do you not think that (and here’s the question par), if there is a guaranteed source of income, that many larger development companies will work less and less on huge AAA titles and, instead, focus more on smaller titles that can be released as part of this contextual Subscription Service?
I'm not saying that thhat shift would even be a bad thing! It would certainly allow for a much more varied offering of games, as there is less risk attached to each individual game.
I wouldn’t be surprised, eventually, to see a truly episodic version of Call of Duty! Say, two levels of the campaign and corresponding maps are released every month. It’d be interesting to see how player feedback alters the game as its later parts are being developed. At the least, it might reflect in the eventual narrative of the game, as the developers shift their ideas to pander to or shock their audience!
Arebt playstation following up with "playstation GO" Which is a vault like option exclusive to retro titles released on ecery other gen? It looks like a trend popping up... which surprised me because that was everything that was wring with the psp go. as a die hard xbox fanboy id like to see what Microsoft bring to the table
ReplyDelete