It seems that Origin Access Premier, the premium-er subscription service announced by EA yesterday, will be priced at 15 euros/dollars a month or 100 euros/dollars a year. This makes the service three times more expensive than the existing Origin Access subscription.

For a long time now I've kind of considered the annual Origin Access, or EA Access on the Xbox, subscription to be a pretty great deal. For 30 bucks a year I've been able to play a pretty great back catalog of games and try out trial versions of all the latest EA titles. The 10 hour trials of games like Battlefront 2, Battlefield 1 and the new Need for Speed games were more than enough for me to get my fix for those games.

However 100 bucks a year is starting to sound a bit salty, considering the extent of the catalog of games available on Xbox Game Pass for a similar or lower price. I hope that this Premier service doesn't cannibalize the existing Origin Access offering.

How do y'all feel about the pricing and value proposition?

This sounds like a pretty solid value proposition if you're the sort of person who enjoys playing the annual EA Sports installments, as I am. Just that alone basically gets you your money's worth for the subscription then you get access to all the other releases on top of that too. Not sure that I'm necessarily going to be jumping at the bit to get it but I'm certainly very open to the idea.

I mean, you've completely ignored the actual benefit of Origin Access Premier, which is that you get the full version of every major EA release (FIFA, Madden, Battlefield, Anthem) on PC included in the subscription with 5 days early access as well. If you were even considering buying only two of those games in the next year then that's incredible value since they usually cost $60 a pop.

Plus this new service isn't replacing the old Origin Access so you don't have to increase the amount you're paying if you don't want.

Hm, seems like a good deal to me. between their sports titles and the rest of the games they put out every year, it seems like it'll pay for itself rather quickly each time. Honestly, the only real downside for me is that given EA's track record, the DLC probably isn't included. For example, you still have to buy it separately for Mass Effect 1-3 and those games have been on the service for ages. If they could guarantee any and all DLC or expansions were included with first party titles, I could see myself signing up.

When there's a tonne of games on the service, you'll probably only subscribe for a year maximum anyway if you're a pro at finishing lots of games, in which case you'll get far more than your money's worth, I'm sure. I've been subscribed for about five months on the standard subscription and have already finished Battlefield 1, 4, Titanfall 2, Furi, ME:A. NFS, Mirror's Edge 2, Orwell, Trine, Crisis 3, etc., plus they just added a dozen+ great games (including Tyranny!), which I will finish next. To me that's already worth well over the £19.99 I payed.

If there's ten or so new or very recent AAA games on the premier subscription a year, and you're not one for reselling or owning certain games forever, you're potentially saving a decent amount of money going this route, so that is a big attraction to me as someone who never replays certain big EA games. If not, it wouldn't be a good choice, but the base sub is still amazing value and will have great games on it, always being drip-fed into the vault.

If the premier version lets you play full versions of new games then that sounds fine. I rarely keep EA games anyway and you'd lose $15 (or more) trading them back for new games once you're done anyway so this just cuts out the middle man. It's not as good as the game pass but it seems like the best you could get from a company like EA.

They killed Mass Effect.

Why do people think it isn't as good as Game Pass? Game Pass is more expensive, and seems to offer the more or less the same amount of value. If you prefer EA games to the complete dearth of first party titles Microsoft even has any more I think EA Access Premium is actually better value.

I don't know why i didn't see it coming but i guess hindsight is 20/20

Subscription based gaming will be the future.

As far as this goes, 100$ a year to access to all their new releases? That's a pretty good deal considering the amount you end up paying for them solo, if it includes indie and smaller title's as well it could be well worth it. Granted if you buy physical this negates the return you can get for reselling but that's never a factor for digital anyway.

Once they(all game companies) get a model that incorporates more than just one publisher things will be well on their way to something game changing IMO.

@bollard: Microsoft's game pass is £8 a month (on offer for 1 atm) whereas this thing is £15. It also, as far as I can tell, is only for PC (so far) whereas game pass is for the XBO and PC.

The doorway to the future has been slightly pushed open.

I'll wait until a couple more companies follow this direction, and the price comes down/everything gets streamlined/bugs ironed out, etc.

The Gamestop Doomsday clock just got a little closer to midnight.

High-school me would be all over this, as someone that bought every year's Madden. Any one EA game a whole year along with Madden would make it worth it. Now that I don't buy sports games nearly at all, it's not attractive to me. But boy is there a market for this. Great offering from EA.

And on the note of MS Game Pass deal, $1 for the first month is nice. Enough to probably finish ReCore, and try out enough of State of Decay 2... even Rise of the Tomb Raider.

One month of game pass was 1€, when I checked a minute ago.

€1 sounds allright to play through Gears 4, some Sea of Thieves, ReCore and.... State of Decay 2.

If you want to compare this with Game Pass, it's worth noting that Game Pass only includes a handful of games if you're playing on PC. It's cool that it has State of Decay, Gears, Sea onTheives and a few other things, but that's not really worth a long term subscription right now.

If EA's offer includes all DLC, that's pretty cool and definitely worth considering for me.

100 for all ea sports games is something I might do TBH. I don't play them enough but I could see doing that once a year or a month or two in the summer.

For one month sure, but Game Pass has no yearly option. Game Pass for the year is £96, whereas Access Premier is 90 euros (so £80-90). I'll concede that the Xbox/PC stuff is nice, but the vast majority of stuff on Game Pass doesn't work on PC - it's only "Play Anywhere" titles. All of the EA titles work on PC, which is far more appealing to me. It would definitely be nice to see it work on console and PC - most of my FIFA friends are on PS4 and so while it's nice to get FIFA 19 free with Access Premier on PC, I would love to be able to take that over onto PS4 and not have to buy it there.

That's a new subscriber temporary offer. If we are counting deals then EA Access is free...

Game pass has a 14 day free trial also. And I believe EA are charging 100 euros, dollars & pounds for their yearly sub because they enjoy fucking over europe. (most american companies do, to be fair)