Slashdot Mirror
EA, Touting 'Profound Impact' of Streaming and Subscription, Announces Origin Access Premier (gamesindustry.biz)
EA CEO Andrew Wilson announced that the game publisher is making a big move into cloud gaming. The company is also planning to launch a new version of its Origin Access subscription service on PC called Origin Access Premiere that will introduce games like Madden, FIFA, and more the same day they launch at retail. From a report: During the publisher's E3 2018 press conference, CEO Andrew Wilson descried the combination of streaming and subscription as "the greatest disruption" to the world of entertainment of the past five years. He pointed to how this business model for movies, TV and books has changed those markets, and believes this combination will have "a profound impact" on the games industry in the years to come. Wilson's comments echoed those of his CFO Blake Jorgensen, who said back in November that a combination of live services, such as FIFA Ultimate Team, and subscriptions will lead to "uncapped" monetisation of its players over the longest possible period of time.
In its latest financials, EA revealed that 40% of its revenue last year came from live services, while full game downloads and physical game sales are dropping. Wilson reminded conference attendees of the publisher's recent acquisition of GameFly's Israel-based cloud gaming team, predicting a future where players can enjoy high-end games on any device anywhere with an internet connection. While there are tech demos for EA's streaming service out there, Wilson stressed that it's "not quite ready for full market primetime," but pitched it as a "promise of what we hope to bring you in the future." In the meantime, Electronic Arts took the opportunity to announce a new subscription system that shows the publisher continuing to push towards a service-based economy for video games. Origin Access Premier is a new addition to the firm's PC-based games service: a premium subscription that gives players access to even more titles.
In its latest financials, EA revealed that 40% of its revenue last year came from live services, while full game downloads and physical game sales are dropping. Wilson reminded conference attendees of the publisher's recent acquisition of GameFly's Israel-based cloud gaming team, predicting a future where players can enjoy high-end games on any device anywhere with an internet connection. While there are tech demos for EA's streaming service out there, Wilson stressed that it's "not quite ready for full market primetime," but pitched it as a "promise of what we hope to bring you in the future." In the meantime, Electronic Arts took the opportunity to announce a new subscription system that shows the publisher continuing to push towards a service-based economy for video games. Origin Access Premier is a new addition to the firm's PC-based games service: a premium subscription that gives players access to even more titles.
Thank you for being a friend Traveled down the road and back again Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut. And if you threw a party Invited everyone you knew You would see the biggest gift would be from me And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Latency, kids lack money, and gamers hate EA anyway. It's not gonna happen, at least not with EA at the forefront. Maybe Valve can do it, but not EA.
When Activision's CEO was pissed because gamers played thousands of hours of Call of Duty and only paid $60 bucks for the privilege. IIRC he stopped just short of calling them thieves. This is like that, only nicer. CEOs are angry they're not getting $60/mo from us to play games.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
EULAs are the new company store. You don't own anything and you can't leave.
... of videogame software is almost complete, due to mass stupidity and technological illiteracy of the average gamer.
As a fan of the Ultima series, seeing the name Origin touted out like this... Origin was the name of the original company that made the Ultima games, which was sold to EA, after the game EA had a huge plot point involving the shapes of the EA logo being a sign of overwhelming oppression.
Every company EA takes over seems to be pulled into doing basically the opposite of what they wanted to do for their customers before, before they are slowly crushed in ignominy.
Seeing the name of Origin used for this online system is pretty nasty in association.
Origin the online service was pushed into prominence almost entirely because EA was unable to get away with charging in-game fees for DLC, instead of letting Steam take a cut of the sales.
They're a single-studio ecosystem - and while not the worst of those - them using Origin as the name of that service really strikes me the wrong way every time I see it.
There are too many games for me to care about EAâ(TM)s offering. Steam is just as annoying as they track your every move. I do hope smaller game shops move yowards the microsoft and apple stores.
Cloud computing might be fine for games like Checkers or a turn based RPG, but not for anything real time, like racing sims.
Microsoft is helping. I do not have uplay or origins accounts. I've had a steam account for over 14 years and refuse to use a different platform mostly out of convenience but don't use it for online games.
It is very clear they want that MMO money. I'm sure they're really shitty that Sony and Microsoft already have their own captive portals.
I won't ever buy another EA game. BF1 was terrible, Battle Front 1 & 2 are terrible and they over charged for those terrible games. EA has turned to political correctness and the idealism of globalism. So long EA.
I am really glad I don't want to play any EA game, thus avoiding the need to install any of their software on my computer.
#DeleteFacebook
If people are steadily moving to mobile instead of console or PC gaming, then the average company can expect a slow decline in profits unless they make the games cheaper (more numbers by luring in poorer folks for less), more expensive (count on PC "whales" for profit with DLC on everything, probably the usual EA plan) or make them move to a mobile version of the same game with a combination of all of those icky tricks plus demanding root access on your smartphone.
I don't know how streaming gaming can work in the states unless there's a shitload of "whales" in cities making up for the lack of broadband speed and service stability in areas that aren't metropolitan. Maybe the cities are all people need? Well, less likely for the infrastructure to be a stinking turd heap, but with the way ISPs despise "unlimited" plans, can anyone *but* the whales afford it?
Not to mention that 4-10Gs of streamed textures would work much better for latency by residing on an HDD/SDD than temporarily in RAM. Technologically speaking, it sounds like they'd have to rely on expensive Fibre-level network connection speeds to keep up with the prettiness of modern PC games, at least.
Expensive proposition, all around.
People here in the comments are bashing EA but are missing the big picture. Cloud gaming IS what gaming WILL be like. It is a guarantee. You can see that is the direction by how things are moving.
1. Live streaming gets massive viewership -- a priming effect for the idea that streaming frames of gameplay is normal (and tech has shown latency can be reduced to the milliseconds -- see that Microsoft, twitch competitor -- sorry i cant remember their name)
2. Mulitplayer is (and always has been) bigger (and growing) than single player.
3. Broadband speeds is commonplace and getting faster.
4. People have different devices (ie, tablets, phones, laptops, pc) which have varying levels of computational power but yearn to play games they normally couldn't
Netflix, Spotify, iTunes, etc show that people are eager to pay monthly subscriptions
And of course for game companies cloud gaming has always been the holy grail because it is limitless in profit and piracy of their IP drops to 0.
So the only question is WHO will control this lucrative market. Logically, it should be a Netflix, a Steam, an iTunes, the Play Store since logically they sever as the hub for entertainment to consumers but as expected the publishers dont want that (ie, EA). They want their own hub for their own games which will cause a fractured mess for consumers. As was the case for movies and music back then until the publishers banded together (e.g. Hulu) or relented (ie, gave into Apple terms, or Netflix terms). In the end it is likely going to settle down and a few hubs will exist and likely it could be Netflix or Steam who are the Cloud Gaming giants.
a combination of live services, such as FIFA Ultimate Team, and subscriptions will lead to "uncapped" monetisation of its players over the longest possible period of time.
At least he's being honest about what the point is. Companies like to pretend this will be good for gamers, but how many gamers are asking for it? Not a lot. The point is to "monetize players over the longest possible period of time". That is, get more money from you for playing the same games.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Fuck you.
I still won't go near a single product of theirs again. While I abhor the idea of a lot of otherwise talented people losing jobs, I'd rather see EA fall victim to their own greed and disingenuous bullshit and collapse in on themselves.
I don't want a subscription to all your effing games.
I don't want full catalog access.
I want the single game I like and enjoy to actually work. And keep working.
I want the game to be free of cheaters.
I want the game to be available after "you" deem it time to kill servers and launch another shitty version with new bugs.
Save BF1.
no i wont sign up for your special separate walled garden. I'm a member of Steam and that's enough. No game is worth going through registering stuff at another website, let alone a credit card.
if you enforce some other form of DRM other than steam.. I'm not buying.
Would do this if it granted access to all of EA's legacy software. Deluxe Paint? Ultima? I mean, there are alternatives, but it would still be cool.