@trafalgarlaw said:
@brodehouse said:
@trafalgarlaw: If you’re an indie developer or even just a small third-party, how important are you going to feel with Sony making a deal with EA and clearly showing bias towards their products?
... Allowing EA to sell a product on your store does not show 'bias' to EA products over other products. This is a complete fabrication by an outsider who knows nothing of business. This would be tantamount to saying that since A Realm Reborn has a subscription fee, Sony is 'making a deal with Square and clearly showing bias towards their products'.
You will need a seperate page for EA Access like PS+ has now. They'll clearly need to up the ads and rework some of the store pages to make this work. How else would you know when a new EA access game has hit the service? The point still stands, how important would you feel when your small game gets buried under the EA Access ads and pages? How else will Sony prevent Ubisoft or Activision from doing a similar service, opening the flood gates to publisher-specific subscriptions?
I say good on Sony for seeing a potentially dangerous development and nipping it in the bud. Sony fought to make ownership of physical, retail products as important as owning a digital one. They won't make moves into favouring an all-digital future exclusively. Microsoft can do this EA thing but having them no vision at all is showing again.
We have multiple free-to-play games on PSN that routinely add content and advertise the new content on PSN. When Dust 514 and Warframe came out, was it the same huge undertaking you're making selling a subscription plan on PSN to be? EA already spends more on advertising than anyone else, and it really doesn't matter whether it's one product or the other. EA already buries indies with their ads. All the major publishers already do this, and of course Sony is going to give the best store space to the people who will pay the most for it. You're taking an irrational 'moral' stand due to the nature of the product not appealing to you. That's fine for personal consumer decisions, but it's absolutely worthless business analysis.
'How else would Sony prevent Ubisoft or Activision from doing a similar service'? Why would they want to prevent them (outside of reducing competition for Plus)? If Ubisoft or Activision are willing to pay to advertise and pay licensing to Sony, Sony lets them advertise and sell products on their store. This is how all other products and advertising work. The only reason Sony has done this is to reduce competition for their own subscription service. It has nothing to do with consumer benefits or equality or fairness to indies or anything of these babyface traits people are trying to pin on them to suit their little cultural console war between good and evil. And supposed journalists who speculate wildly about "MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE THE TIDES OF THE MOON" aren't helping anyone understand anything. They're just acting as the promoters of the console war, selling tickets to storylines.
Sony has not 'fought to make ownership of physical products important', they've just reduced the amount of products you can use on their system. That is it. EA Access existing does not mean anything for physical EA products unless the people in the physical market overwhelmingly transition to using EA Access. At that point, the physical market may not make sense anymore, and shift into more of a 'premium goods' thing much like PC games have been leaning on. Most of the market prefers physical games and as such, physical games are being sold and the market works in such a way to increase physical sales (launch days are a result of the unique attributes of selling physical goods). Enough of the market prefers buying digital that it makes sense for companies to offer digital distribution models in addition to the existing physical model. In the future, consumer preferences may change. However what you're demanding is that Sony enforce the physical model dogmatically, even if there exists people who prefer digital, because you prefer physical.
I own a Playstation 4. I do not own an Xbox One. I cannot even try EA Access on my console, I can't decide for myself whether it appeals to my interests, because Sony has decided that it's not good for me. When really, it's because it's not good for them. When I first heard this story, I was fine with it, but hearing these kind of nonsense defenses of anti-consumer behavior as being pro-consumer is absolutely galling. I will not be pastored to by a corporation about what's good for me. I want competition, I want options for my money. If EA Access is not a good deal for me; I can not buy it on my own volition. If EA Access is a good deal for me; it doesn't matter because Sony won't allow it.
Edit: If there was two pieces of adult learning I would advocate for with absolute will, it's logic classes, and economics classes. Understanding economics in an intrinsic and academic sense will do so much more for you to protect yourself and understand business and economic actions than will widespread cultural stick-planting based around suspicion and ignorance. The easiest way to make young boys kill themselves in a war for your benefit is to build a cultural narrative of good versus evil. The easiest way to make consumers work against their interests for your benefit is to build a cultural narrative of good versus evil.
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