EA will be bringing its EA Access subscription service to Steam soon, the company has confirmed. The subscription service has been available on Xbox One since 2014 beforeEA Access became available on PS4in 2019.
Earlier today, EA began to make a huge number of games available on Steam. EA had made some of its games available on the PC gaming platform back in October 2019, but many more titles were added today.Burnout Paradise,Unravel Two, andMirror’s Edge Catalystcan now be purchased and played through Steam. EA has also put some of these games on sale, which is a big difference to February 2020 when the company chose tomake many of its games much more expensive on Steam.
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It may be surprising to see that EA now has plans to bring EA Access to more PC gamers. The company offers a separate PC gaming subscription, called Origin Access, which works much like EA Access does. EA also launchedOrigin Access Premierin 2018 and this more expensive subscription provides access to DLC, microtransaction bonuses, and early access to a full game and not a trial. It’s unclear what the company plans to do with Origin Access once EA Access has launched on Steam.
The decision to offer EA Access on Steam, a competitor toEA’s own PC gaming store, shows just how important subscription services now are to the games industry. Subscription services offer publishers and platform holders a recurring revenue, meaning that they make money when gamers aren’t buying games. This is one of the reasons why Sony has hired big to grow its digital business and why Microsoft offers subscriptions such as Xbox Game Pass.
These subscription services could potentially make much more money once the PS5 and Xbox Series X have launched. Microsoft has confirmed that it will offer an Xbox All Access subscription for the Xbox Series X, which will feature the console and things likeXbox Game Pass. It’s unclear what EA’s is going to do with its subscriptions on next-gen consoles, but on PC, it has big plans.
