For nine straight financial quarters since 2013, Netflix subscriptions have increased by at least a few million. The service now has over 65 million subscribers. Last we heard from Spotify (which was in June), it had doubled its subscriber base to 20 million, and head of communications Jonathan Prince said that the second half of 2015 was Spotify’s best period of growth ever. Apple Music and Google Play Music All Access also sport millions of subscribers. What’s my point? Our generation favors the flat-rate, all-you-can-stream business model.
Many of us who are 20-30 years old were going through grade school and middle school about the same time that fast computers and high-speed internet were making their way into our homes. As the digital Renaissance was beginning to unfold, the more cunning and thrifty among us realized that almost anything non-tangible could be had for free; it was the age of Napster, Limewire, Bear Share, and Kazaa. Now that we’ve grown older and adjusted our consciences accordingly, we’re willing to pay for the things we care about, but we don’t want to pay for every little thing. That’s why most of the music we listen to at home, and most of the movies we watch, come from streaming services that we pay low, flat rates for.
Video games for their part are still clinging to more traditional business models. Many of us like to go buy physical discs for the games that we play and if you want to go all digital, you’re still going to pay for each game individually. This makes sense and I don’t think any of you have a problem with that, but if there was a killer subscription service for gaming that was similar to Netflix, would you sign up for it? We have PlayStation Now if we want to play some of the bigger PS3 hits, but there hasn’t really been a service offering more modern games, until now.
EA Access has been killing it on the Xbox One. For $5 a month you get to play the full versions of some of the most highly rated EA games (and even some from other publishers). Now, the service has finally come to PC gamers in the form of Origin Access . 2016 was shaping up to be a phenomenal year for consoles, and Origin Access is exactly what PC gamers needed to get pumped about the year ahead.
Like Netflix and Spotify, the success of Origin Access is going to depend on the number of new and residual subscribers. For those that are willing to dish out $5 (seriously, that’s a fancy, grande drink from Starbucks), it’s a hell of a deal. Right now that 5 bucks lets you play Dragon Age Inquisition, Battlefield 4, Fifa 15, Need for Speed Rivals and many more. More games are going to be continuously added, and not just the puny, b-list games that show up as free PlayStation Plus games that no one cares about; we’re talking about the AAA big boys.
Your subscription also grants you access to early trials. Remember when Xbox One players got to play Star Wars Battlefront a week early? Whenever you buy a game that you’ve tried out prior to launch, your progress carries over. A 10% on all Origin purchases (even during sales and promotions) is just the icing on the cake. EA didn’t pay me to write this article; I really am pumped about Origin Access and I think that if it succeeds we’re going to start seeing a lot more subscription-based services from other publishers. Can you imagine the killing Square Enix would make off of something like this?
What do you guys think of EA Access and Origin Access? Will you be signing up? Why or why not? As someone whose job security relies on being a well-balanced and widely informed gamer, there are a lot of big games out there that I need to play that I just didn’t have the cash to buy. For me, Origin Access is an affordable way to conquer my backlog.