If you are paying a monthly fee just to access games EA already has designated in thier vault then the offering 10% off a new purchase may not seem so extreme considering the months between releases a subscriber would still be paying money to them.
You don't have to keep the sub forever to keep a new game (at least I have not read that anywhere) you only sub for the vault.
But EA doesn't lose money if you are paying a subscription. Also The MSRP of Digital titles are set high not to anger B&M locations. 10% of a digital release should still bring in profit for EA.
The market test for PSPgo was to test digital sales. People purchased digital titles basically only through PSN. Iirc there were no codes for sale. So the market test is similar because it is about control and what consumers are willing to accept.
Getting into a deal doesn't mean they have less control of their system. it simply means that they have agreed to something and they either see it to or use money to back out.
I am not sure if you became confused about the point I was bringing up. I wasn't saying that games you purchase would require a subscription perpetually. Only initially. And yes it may seem absurd now, but that doesn't mean they won't try it. MS thought what they were planning for the One was a great idea as well and stuck to their guns until they say numbers proving the market wasn't buying into it.
And want to talk about deals that leave a company stuck? How do you think Activision feels? Do you think the deals for CoD:Ghosts and Advanced Warfare were created this gen?
The deals won't kill these companies and over time they will just try something else once the contract is up. It is never a dire situation.
Ok, the reason why I'm getting confused by your point is that you seem to be implying that Sony is making the correct call to restrict us from having this service on the PS4 because of what it could evolve to be in the future. That naturally caused me to assume the scenario you were talking about (having to be subbed in order to buy a game) would be something that would be objectively bad for the consumer and good for EA. Removing the need to remain subbed changes the dynamics of this dramatically for the following reason:
Say I want to buy Need for Speed Rivals digitally. Currently it costs £54.99 to purchase. With EA Access it costs £3.99 for the sub, and then £49.49 to purchase. So buy taking an EA Access sub I pay £1.51 less, whilst gaining a month's access to the vault games. This isn't something I need EA to force on me, as right now if I was going to buy Need for Speed Rivals digitally, it makes absolutely no sense not to take up EA's offer, and that's only after purchasing a single game. Now let's imagine I also decide to buy UFC. I've already paid the sub, so that doesn't get charged again, yet I still get another 10% off. So now I've paid a total of £102.97 as opposed to £109.98. And this doesn't even factor in the 10% off also being applied to any Season Passes or DLC I may want for either game.
Basically, as of right now, as soon as you take out an EA Access subscription, it becomes literally
impossible to pay EA as much for the same content as it would have cost without EA Access. So why are we assuming that EA's master plan is to force this scenario of paying less whilst gaining access to more content on everyone? And even if we did assume that... how is this a dire situation that must be avoided at all costs?
As for the contract stuff, yea I know about Activision. The difference is that it made perfect sense for Activision to jump into those deals with MS at the time because it was actually beneficial for them back then (as well as MS). They probably wouldn't have signed the same agreement today, so again... why would MS agree to this today? What would EA be offering them to make it worthwhile?
All people were saying were "I don't like this idea so I am not going to preorder the One" and MS responded after seeing the numbers.
This is completely BS actually. I know this for a fact, as I am one of the few people who did like the previous offering (again 100% digital here). People weren't simply saying that they didn't like it, so they wouldn't buy it. People were acting as though it was the single most evil thing a company could have dared to attempt. People weren't even stopping at just MS, and were extremely hostile to anyone else that didn't hate it, as we were apparently part of the problem. I've been through so many discussions about it over the past year that if you like I can PM you examples of some of the things people were saying.
I remember a few people defending MS on those same grounds. It's a poor comparison anyway. On one hand you have a company restricting consumers rights to sell, trade or give away games, and making consumers log in every day to access their games (something no game platform including Steam or iOS makes you do); and on the other hand you have a company not letting another company sell what is, arguably, a pretty shitty subscription service on that first company's storefront. Not even remotely comparable in my opinion.
Yea, I was one of those people. I disagree that it's a poor comparison though. Although what is actually being offered (or not offered) is rather the different, the end argument basically boils down to "you disagree? buy the other console then". I actually think that's ok, neither company is obligated to do what we want, but people are free to complain in both situations. I don't want to go through the whole DRM stuff in yet another thread, but it wasn't all restrictions. They were offering quite a few things that would have made digital ownership better for a lot people, myself included. If something being arguably "a pretty shitty subscription service" (and I'd argue that you'd struggle to explain why it's shitty), is a reason to simply not allow people to try it for themselves, then an arguably extremely shitty rental service like PS Now should also be something they'd want to protect us from.
Having done the math based on my spending habits in regards to EA games...it would cost me more on the EA Plan...
The problem for me is that I'm big into sports games...and I want them at release...so waiting for them to hit the vault is just not an option...
So there are other ways for it to be shitty as well
Firstly, something being shitty for you personally is a pretty poor reason for wanting it to not exist for anyone else. Secondly, you can still buy your big sports games at release anyway, EA Access isn't preventing you from doing that. Thirdly, if you wanted them digitally then you need to re-run your math, because as shown above, it's actually cheaper to sub to EA Access for a month AND buy the game outright, than it is to just buy the game digitally. So you may need to rethink what makes it shitty.