Electronic Arts is bringing its EA Access subscription service, which offers early access trials to new games and a library of existing games as part of “the Vault,” to PlayStation 4 this July, the publisher recently announced on Tuesday.Like the current Xbox offering, EA Access for the PS4 costs either $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. In addition to unlimited access to EA’s vault of games, Access also comes with other perks, including a 10 percent discount on full-priced EA game purchases as well as early trials of upcoming EA games.
Like the current Xbox offering, EA Access for the PS4 costs either $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. In addition to unlimited access to EA’s vault of games, Access also comes with other perks, including a 10 percent discount on full-priced EA game purchases as well as early trials of upcoming EA games.
Currently, EA Access promises subscribers access to more than 50 games as part of the Vault. That selection of games in the vault include a number of both older and newer game releases like Star Wars Battlefront 2, Burnout Paradise Remastered, Fe, The Sims 4, Battlefield 1, and EA Sports’ most recent Madden, NBA, and NHL games. On Xbox One, EA Access also offers backward-compatible Xbox 360 games with the subscription.
Outside of this EA game library there are also early access benefits and discounts to be had. EA’s Play First Trials give members of the service the chance to download and play new release EA games before anyone else.
There are limits on how far into the game you can get and how much you’re allowed to play but typically you get to try out a new game around five days before its official release. If you like what you try and decide to purchase the full game, all of your progress from the trial carries over and you can get a discount off the full price. The member discount is 10%, but this applies to DLC, season passes, and Ultimate Team content as well as full games so you can making a saving several times over on games which continually release content.
While EA did not provide a list of compatible titles coming to the Vault for PS4, it is presumed that the list will be smaller than what’s available on Xbox One, given that the PS4 does not support PlayStation 3 games through backward compatibility. In addition to a library of older games, EA Access also offers what EA calls Play First Trials, which provide access to up to 10 hours of newer games. EA Access’ current Play First Trials include Anthem, Battlefield 5, and FIFA 19. Subscribers to EA Access also get a 10 percent discount on digital full-game purchases, expansions, and in-game items, like FIFA and Madden Ultimate Team points, and Apex Coins for Apex Legends.
When EA Access launched in 2014, Sony famously passed on offering the service to its players, commenting at the time to Game Informer that EA Access didn’t offer a “good value to the PlayStation gamer.” It’s not entirely clear what changed Sony’s mind five years later, but with the growing popularity of subscription services like Access and Microsoft’s own Xbox Game Pass offering, it’s possible Sony was eager for a piece of the action instead of leaving it all to Microsoft.
Since the big EA Access launch on Xbox One in 2014, Electronic Arts has expanded the subscription service to PC with Origin Access and Origin Access Premier. The subscription service’s availability on PS4 is a reversal for Sony. In 2014, the PlayStation maker said it believed the service “does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect.”
“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,” a Sony representative noted at the time.
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