14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier in the week, video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced the existence of an entirely new service called EA Access, which will be launched on the Xbox One home console from Microsoft and is designed to allow gamers access to a variety of titles as long as they pay a monthly subscription of 4.99 dollars or Euro.
The service is available immediately to a limited number of users, as the company probably tests out some features, and will be offered to the entire customer base before the end of the year.
Among the initial titles included in EA Access are FIFA 14, Madden NFL 14, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4, and more than 100 other games are set to be offered in the future.
Electronic Arts also says that it will offer early access to a number of its upcoming games in trial form and is giving those who subscribe a price cut of 10 percent on both video games and other extra content associated with them.
EA Access is at the moment only planned to appear on the Xbox One, and Sony claims that the offer would not be good value for PlayStation 4 users, who have access to the PS Plus service.
Xbox One Can Claim to Offer More Value
The list of games Electronic Arts is including in its new service is pretty interesting, and the offer will probably be a very attractive one to those who own a Microsoft-made next-gen console and have not previously purchased the likes of FIFA 14 or Battlefield 4.
The success of the EA Access initiative will depend heavily on the ease of use of the program and the speed of the downloads, but even its announcement marks a break with the past.
The Xbox One is lagging behind in terms of sales when compared to the PlayStation 4, even after the Kinect motion tracking system was eliminated from the retail package and the price was dropped to 399 dollars or Euro.
Microsoft clearly needs to close that gap and is now willing to take steps that it would not have agreed with a few years ago.
The EA Access announcement gives the company the occasion to brag about the value that it is offering on its console and the freedom that players have to access a variety of games via orthodox means.
Electronic Arts Secures an Audience
Electronic Arts also benefits because it gains unique access to the entire install base of the Xbox One, which is estimated to be of close to 7 million users worldwide at the moment.
A number of players will not be interested in EA Access, but most of those who play about one full major release a month will probably be attracted to the concept, especially if they have not yet played big recent EA releases.
The two companies can use the new initiative to gain a competitive advantage over their main rivals, which include Sony, Activision and Ubisoft, and it will be interesting to see the impact the new concept has on the future of the Xbox One and that of titles like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Battlefield Hardline.