Origin Access offers up new premium Premier tier
Top shelf gaming
During today's E3 event, Electronic Arts revealed their new premium subscription tier for Origin Access, called Origin Access Premier. It'll let members play EA's new games as much as they please, including Madden NFL 19, Fifa 19, Battlefield V and, of course, Anthem. A pass to play every big new EA game without buying 'em.
Update: Cleaned up some confusion about what this does. Apologies. EA were a bit vague and it was a heck of a busy Saturday evening. -ed.
The regular Origin Access program lets subscribers play a selection of older games from EA and other publishers in 'The Vault' as much as they please, as well as trying EA's new games for ten hours before they launch. This new Premium tier will give unlimited playtime of EA's new games too, from five days before they launch until you stop being a Premium member - no need to buy the latest annual sequels.
Origin Access Premier will be £14.99 per month or £89.99 per year. You can pre-register here. The basic Origin Access service costs £3.99 per month or £19.99 for a year.
There's little doubt that EA is trying to compete with the Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass. EA also explained that they're moving into Playstation Now's space by working towards cloud gaming, streaming HD games even to mobile devices. That's separate from Access Premier, mind.
The video/ad for the new service is below. It features people who love to wear EA shirts while playing EA streaming services and doing EA smiles. It all looks much more fun and much better lit than any streaming video game experience I've ever had and I want to feel the way these people look.
Terence Wiggins made an astute observation about Andrew Wilson's outfit this year, correcting a mistake from previous E3 presentations.
I had my own thoughts about how elaborate the name for this service has become. (Wilson may have said "disruption" more than once in his speech. To understand how hard I was laughing you should really catch the new season of Kimmy Schmidt.)
Check out our E3 2018 tag for more announcements, trailers, news, and goodness knows what else.