Expect big emphasis on EA Access, Origin Game Time, and more

Feb 2, 2015 09:36 GMT  ·  By

Electronic Arts claims that gamers nowadays are moving into a direction where they want to try out new titles for free before actually committing to a purchase. As such, it wants to further innovate in this segment, through things like EA Access.

Electronic Arts is currently one of the biggest video game publishers, boasting some big profits for the last several months. However, this doesn't mean that the company wants to stop trying out new solutions to further grow its lead over its competition.

Free-to-start experiences will become more popular, EA believes

While talking with investors, via GamesIndustry, EA CEO Andrew Wilson claims that its future prospects include a bigger emphasis on so-called "free-to-start" experiences, which means that players expect to try out new things for free before committing to big purchases.

Wilson believes that this movement is already gaining traction when it comes to movies, TV shows, or books, so games are a natural fit to this new initiative both on consoles and on other platforms like smartphones or tablets.

"As we look to the future, we believe a very big part of our player base will expect a free-to-start experience," Wilson explains. "When we look at film, TV, music, books, very often there is this free trial notion that actually onboards new players, new listeners, new readers, or new viewers into a service."

"We're actively looking into how we could offer that type of experience to our players on console and across other platforms."

It's unclear just where EA is going to take this new strategy, but it does offer experiences that promote this, like EA Access on the Xbox One, not to mention the Origin Game Time program on the PC, which allows users to play a game for a certain time.

However, it's unclear if demos will still play a role in EA's future, as most recent titles, like Inquisition, haven't enjoyed any such things, but betas, like the upcoming one for Battlefield Hardline, could become more common.