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EA Announces Its Plans for a Netflix-Style Streaming Subscription Service

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EA Subscription service plans

Electronics Arts (EA), a name that is divisive in the gamer community, always tries to create the next big trend in video games, and right now that’s a Netflix-like subscription model.

According to sites such as  PC Aficionado and Games Industry, EA’s VP of investor relations, Chris Evenden, announced at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference the company’s plan to make a new streaming platform.

“We’ve been building an infrastructure both from a product and a marketing perspective so we can move our slate across to new platforms, and we can move with our games across to new platforms as well,” stated Evenden. “So all of these things, we’ve been working on for five or more years now, actually. But I think it’s inevitable that the gaming entertainment world will move in much the same way that the music and video entertainment worlds have already moved, in the sense that people have moved from an ownership model to an access model. And you’ll see that in gaming, just as you’ve seen it with Spotify and Netflix in other media businesses…That infrastructure barrier is still there, but it’s shrinking very rapidly, and we think in the next couple years, you’ll see some major technological announcements that will prove to be commercially significant in the next three to five years.”

According to Evenden, EA’s streaming service would probably cost $9.99 a month and would preclude the need for a console or a computer, since, as he put it, “all you need locally is literally a smart TV.” This service sounds very similar to Sony’s PlayStation Now, a subscription streaming service that lets gamers stream from a large library of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 games on either a PS4 or a Windows PC.

While EA’s plans are good in theory, we know very little about the service. Just as PlayStation Now lets gamers who don’t own a PS3 or 4 enjoy PlayStation exclusives such as Ratchet & Clank, EA’s subscription service could allow audiences who can’t afford gaming consoles or PCs to experience games such as Dead Space and Jade Empire. However, several burning questions remain that could make or break EA’s plans. Will the company provide games from its large and extensive library or just limit the selection to more recent titles? Do users need to buy a special “EA controller” to play these games on the smart TV? Will players need to pay extra subscription fees to participate in multiplayer matches? Until EA answers these questions, I will remain highly skeptical of the service and its viability.

All you have to do to get my attention is talk about video games, technology, anime, and/or Dungeons & Dragons - also people in spandex fighting rubber suited monsters.

Gaming

Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made

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As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.

Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”

You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.

 

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.

The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.

The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.

The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.

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This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive

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Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.

For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”

Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.

Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.

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