EA recently released a service exclusive to Xbox One owners called EA Access. It is in beta form right now and features four games you can play for a $5 a month subscription (or $30/year). Among them are Fifa 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4. More games will be arriving on this service soon. EA Access will also allow early access for some titles and discounts for Xbox One games. No doubt this is Microsoft’s answer to Sony’s Playstation Plus which offers similar deals.
So, what’s the big deal? This service seems fair enough. Pay a subscription fee and get access to titles. Pick and choose what you want to play. The selection will grow and so will EA and Microsoft’s profits. Sounds a lot like Netflix. This is a HUGE deal. This is the next step to game streaming.
It’s been predicted for a years now that digital distribution will soon dominate the games market. Services like Steam and Origin are exclusively online and dominate games sales. The popularity and viability of digital distribution is undeniable. However, all of this digital distribution and the rise of new subscriptions to game content is all leading to a new phenomenon. One that does not involve a box in your living room.
Eventually there will be no more ‘boxes.’ No more physical consoles or gaming hardware. Companies like Netflix are slowly but surely supplanting movie theaters and cable companies. Not only is the service great but it works with simple, cheap subscription fees. No Time Warner Cable or Comcast out to empty your wallet. Netflix thrives off of pure popularity, not rip-offs. Gaming is the biggest entertainment industry in the world now. And this industry is headed in the same direction.
Game streaming is similar to movie or TV show streaming. Games stream to your computer from server farms somewhere in the world. However, the idea is that eventually we won’t need hardware in our living rooms to run our games. The hardware will exist in the server farm somewhere. If internet connections are improved (which they most likely will be) the computing and streaming process can be so seamless that your games will run in a server farm and stream to you seamlessly and simultaneously.
Game streaming is not new. Companies have tried it, but mostly with disastrous results. OnLive, the first commercial game streaming venture, debuted in 2010. It was much too early for it’s time and was a failure both technologically and in popularity. Now EA Access and Playstation Plus are testing the waters to see if subscriptions to game libraries can be viable to take this next step towards streaming.
Does this mean that you won’t be able to own gaming hardware for yourself in the future? Not necessarily. I think PC gaming will prevail to an extent. Much of future gaming will take place on computers most likely because most streaming occurs on laptops and desktops now, not devices like Apple TV or Amazon Fire. Computers are always going to be around. So owning one and playing games on it with its own computing power will still be an option. Just a severely less popular one.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!
