EA announced Origin Premiere service level @ E3 2018

[BRiT]

EA has added another tier to their EA Origin Access service. For $100 a year or $15 a month, PC subscribers will now get access to even the newest of EA games, before they even release to the general public.

Origin Access Premier is a new tier of our PC gaming membership that gets you new games like Battlefield V, FIFA 19, Madden NFL 19, and Anthem before launch. No trial, no waiting, just play.

Plus, dive into over 100 PC titles whenever you want, as long as you're a Premier member – that means great EA games and titles from our partners like Batman: Arkham Asylum, INSIDE, The Witness, and more.

Then save 10% on other Origin digital purchases like Ultimate Team content. Origin Access Premier arrives on PC this summer.

Find out more at http://x.ea.com/47314

 

[CSI PC]

EA has added another tier to their EA Origin Access service. For $100 a year or $15 a month, PC subscribers will now get access to even the newest of EA games, before they even release to the general public.

Origin Access Premier is a new tier of our PC gaming membership that gets you new games like Battlefield V, FIFA 19, Madden NFL 19, and Anthem before launch. No trial, no waiting, just play.

Plus, dive into over 100 PC titles whenever you want, as long as you're a Premier member – that means great EA games and titles from our partners like Batman: Arkham Asylum, INSIDE, The Witness, and more.

Then save 10% on other Origin digital purchases like Ultimate Team content. Origin Access Premier arrives on PC this summer.

Find out more at http://x.ea.com/47314

Does the membership also give access to DLC/expansions or just the base game?
It does not seem that clear in the link.

Sounds great in principle, as long as you intend to keep the service going otherwise prices adds up when one wants to end the service and then needs to buy the games one wants to keep; quite a few do enjoy playing some of the games again at a much later date.
Being cynical, gives EA a nice QA group for their AAA games pre/early launch, and you pay for the privilege
Yeah it adds more than that from a service perspective, but still sure it is one aspect they have thought about.

 

[eastmen]

That's the point , they want you to keep the thing going year round even when they have nothing released so they get free money

 

[BRiT]

If you normally buy 2 EA games a year this service pays for itself, no? BF-V for $50 and Anthem for $50 (using slightly discounted PC pricing for day 1 titles), except you wouldn't get to play all the other EA games for the first year. I suppose maybe it depends on EA maintaining the pace of 2 games a year you'd want.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This and Anthem might finally get me to install Origin, as much as I hate the thought.

Just sub for one month. Wish something like this had been available for Destiny 2. I bought the package that included the season pass. I still haven't played it since the latest DLC came out. Waste of money.

Regards,
SB

 

[McHuj]

It would be interesting if they could extend this to Xbox EA play with one subscription and make it similar to Xbox play anywhere.

I’m certainly interested.

 

[wco81]

Would it be unlimited access to new games or would it be access to new games during a preview period but then you have to pay $60 as usual for new games?

Because isn't that the way their Xbox service works, it gives you unlimited access to older games and a limited preview of new upcoming games. But if you want to keep playing the new games, you have to buy them or wait about a year before they are put into the service?

I'd be interested in trying out some games on my laptop but probably won't run well with an integrated GPU. Maybe they will have demos.

 

[Malo]

Would it be unlimited access to new games or would it be access to new games during a preview period but then you have to pay $60 as usual for new games?

It's unlimited access to all games, new and old, as long as you're paying the subscription.

 

[Svensk Viking]

I've occasionally been considering to use the normal Origin Access, it's really appealing for testing those games that you've been eyeing but aren't sure about, so my initial response to this is positive. A bit too expensive in my taste to make it an impulse purchase though.

The worry I see for long term though is EA removing the cheaper Origin Access and only offering the Premier subscription.

 

[Entropy]

It’s simply the wrong model. It is as if Sony music, EMI, and all the others would launch their own music streaming services, $100 each, as opposed to their combined catalogs going through Spotify.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It’s simply the wrong model. It is as if Sony music, EMI, and all the others would launch their own music streaming services, $100 each, as opposed to their combined catalogs going through Spotify.

It's a step. Everyone wants to be THE all in one service, but the problem we have is that not only do we have competing companies wanting to be the one that does that, but we have competing platforms.

Plus you have the fact that Microsoft tried that with the launch of the XBO, and the internet practically blew up in outrage.

That set back the movement for something like this massively. So now companies are approaching it gingerly hoping not to get the internets most vocal gamers into a bad mood.

Regards,
SB

 

[Entropy]

I’m not sure Microsoft botching their XBox console launch matters much when it comes to PC subscription services.
The easy path would be to add a subscription model to Steam. There. Done.
However, even when it comes to game sales EA, Ubi, Activision/Blizzard have insisted on having their own boutiques, much to the irritation of their customers, and now EA tries this, a subscription service within a single shop. It’s just a bad model, which becomes painfully obvious when I look at my game library and see how many publishers are represented.

(Not to mention that if your economy or free time contracted, you would still have to pay all those subscription fees or loose your game library.)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I’m not sure Microsoft botching their XBox console launch matters much when it comes to PC subscription services.
The easy path would be to add a subscription model to Steam. There. Done.

But even that doesn't help as you can't get any of EA's new games on the service. Basically only EA titles are ones that were sold on Steam prior to EA withdrawing themselves from Steam. You also can't get any of Blizzard's games.

That's basically like Spotify being able to host everyone's music except for music published by Sony. Also you have the same problem that MS faces with Game Pass. Convincing publishers to allow their titles to be part of the service.

Prior to the internet blow up, MS was making significant headway with multiple publishers for some radical changes on how games are delivered to consumers, one of which was games as part of a subscription service. Now it's much more difficult for them, but they continue to work at it. Granted that was going to be on console but it would have set a precedent that would likely have then been followed on PC, whether by MS or Steam or someone else as publishers would now have experience with it.

Regards,
SB