EA Access Review

EA Access is a subscription-based game service that was released by Electronic Arts (EA) on August 11th, 2014 on the Xbox One. For the price of $4.99 a month or $29.99 ($2.49 a month) allows you to play a number of games. At the time of this review, there are 47 games available to play. EA Access isn't a streaming service, instead, you pick the game you want to play and download it as if you bought a digital copy. You can download all the games at any time, as long as you have the hard drive room for it. As long as you're paid up you be able to play any games you downloaded. If you end your subscription the games can still be on your hard drive but you'll not be able to play it. Also, you do not need to have Xbox Gold in order to use EA Access unless of course if you want to play one of the games online.



I've subscribed to EA Access for around nine months and I can say that I like it very much. I've been able to play a bunch of games that I've never purchased but have wanted to. Since I started my subscription EA has doubled the games available to play. The biggest issue I've had is with sports games. As of now, there are 16 sports games which are great if you like these games but to me, it's just filler.

The rest of the games available to play are a combination of arcade games, backward compatible Xbox 360 and Xbox One games. There are a bunch of first-person shooters including a number of Battlefield games, RPGs like Dragon Age Inquisition,
You can play numerous Battlefield games, two Dragon Age games, the first three Mass Effect games, two Mirrors Edge games, two Dead Space games and a couple Need For Speed games. Currently, there are seven games that I want to play so I feel like I've gotten a lot for my money (there are many more games in the Vault that I'd play if I hadn't already beaten them.)

Another benefit of EA Access is trials of new EA games. Unlike some trails that allow you to play to a certain point in the game, with EA Access trails you can play the complete game for 10 hours. Since I've been a subscriber they've put up Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefield 1, and a few others that I've forgotten about. I'm big into trying out a game before purchasing it and think the 10 hours of gameplay is a great idea.

The last perk is DLC for games in the vault. When I first started my subscription EA offered up some of the DLC for Battlefield Hardline for free which you get to keep it forever but if you don't own Battlefield Hardline and end your subscription you won't be able to use the DLC. This program is rare, I think EA has only offered up this once since I've subscribed. New games are added to the Vault monthly, this month Dragon Age: Origins and Dead Space Ignition were added.

The biggest hurdle coming up for EA Access is Xbox's own streaming service called Xbox Game Pass which will offer 100 games to start with for $10 a month. Since EA Access is only on Xbox One this may take a huge bite out of their profits. For now, I'll be keeping EA Access but I will also try out Xbox Game Pass and we'll see which one I'll be keeping.

Overall I think EA Access is a great idea that gets better every month. Of course, you have no choice of what games are added but they've put up many different genres of games that will appeal to almost every gamer. For $4.99 a month you can't even rent a game at Redbox for two nights. If you're interested in EA Access you can give it a try a month for free so if you have an Xbox One you have nothing to lose. I give EA Origins an 8 out of 10.