Yesterday, EA had announced the EA Access program for the Xbox One, where players have access to many EA games to play as much as they want, for a subscription fee of $4.99 a month or $30 a year. I thought to myself that it was only a matter of time before this is announced for the PS4 as well, thinking that this is a great opportunity Sony should not pass up. Turns out, Sony already did pass on the idea.

According to Gameinformer, Sony “evaluated the EA Access subscription offering and decided that it does not bring the kind of value PlayStation customers have come to expect,” and “Playstation Plus memberships are up 200% since the launch of PlayStation 4 which shows gamers are looking for memberships that offer a multitude of services, across various devices, for one low price.” Then Sony went on to say that asking PS Plus members to spend an extra $5 on top of that is not a good value.

First of all, the Playstation Plus statistic is a really bad excuse. We all know PS Plus is mandatory to play online on the PS4 whereas before with the PS3, it wasn’t necessary. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why memberships are now up 200%. Then Sony went on to use this statistic as a reason members are looking for a membership that offers a bunch of services at one price, as if to say Sony is looking out for us getting a good value. Let us remind ourselves that Sony is experimenting with these Playstion Now prices. Come on Sony, you’re not fooling anyone.

Because EA does produce annual games such as Madden, UFC, and FIFA, it would be nice to have access to these games without fully committing to buying. $5 a month to try out the latest Madden as much as I want, sounds like a sweet deal to me and if I wanted to play games such as DragonAge: Inquisition for a longer period of time, $30 for a year isn’t such a bad deal either! I would have really liked this program to come to the PS4, since I am buying one in September. I feel Sony has missed a big opportunity with EA Access and fans might not be so forgiving, especially if PS Now proves to be expensive and not worth the money. We’ll decide the value of our dollar then.