The PS4 was curiously left out of EA's newly announced subscription plan for the Xbox One, but it wasn't a simple "we'll support it eventually" omission. As it turns out, the Japanese electronics firm flat out rejected it.
A Sony spokesperson told Game Informer that the company evaluated the EA Access subscription offer and concluded it didn't bring the value PlayStation gamers expect compared to its own PS Plus service.
"Gamers are looking for memberships that offer a multitude of services, across various devices, for one low price," the Sony representative expounded. "We don't think asking our fans to pay an additional $5 a month for this EA-specific program represents good value to the PlayStation gamer."
Members club
Sony is somewhat justified in saying this; after all PS Plus gives two free games a month for each of its individual systems, including the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita.
For a $9.99 (£5.49, AU$9.95) monthly subscription fee, PS Plus also grants players 3GB of online storage to save files, discounts on other items across the entire PSN store and access to online multiplayer on the PS4. PS Plus' yearly rate is $50/£40 (about AU$53).
EA Access on the other hand charges $5.99/£3.99 (about AU$5.31) a month/$29.99 (about AU$31.96) a year and only has four games on tap at the moment. EA promises more games are on their way and gamers will be able to save 10% when buying any EA product in the Xbox storefront.
PS No-w
Conveniently Sony happens to be on the cusp of launching PS Now, a streaming service that could butt heads with EA Access. From our own time with the service still in beta, PS Now is arguably the worst deal out there with many games priced at $2.99 (about £1.76, AU$3.21) for only four hours of access.
If anything PS Now could learn from EA's subscription plan, which provides better access in every way. Even if Sony can offer up more games, EA Access is an arguably superior service because it lets gamers download full games rather than unreliably stream them over the web.
- Get ready for a lot of remastered PS3 games coming to current gen
