Ubisoft say Streaming Games is the future and EA announce Origin Access Premier

[Master Disaster]

I've grouped these together because they're related and both happened within days of each other.

 

First during EA Play Andrew "lootbox" Wilson took to the stage to proudly announce Origin Access Premium, this is a PC only subscription service giving players access to all EAs big games as well as a library of 100 other games for the low low cost of $15 per month or $100 per year.

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Electronic Arts announced Origin Access Premier, a subscription service for the PC platform which will include all major releases on the day they are released. According to the press release sent out by the publisher just minutes ago, the subscription will cost $99.99 per year or $14.99 monthly.

4 games were detailed to be available at lunch, namely Battlefield 5, Madden 19 (available on PC again), FIFA 19 & Anthem.

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EA SPORTS Madden NFL 19 which delivers visuals and gameplay powered by Frostbite, along with more game-changing control to players than ever before starting August 2, 2018 for Origin Access Premier members.

EA SPORTS FIFA 19 which brings a champion-caliber experience on and off the pitch, powered by Frostbite, with the integration of the UEFA Champions League. Fans can also enjoy enhanced gameplay features that provide new and unrivaled ways to play starting September 20, 2018 for Origin Access Premier members.

Battlefield V which immerses players in unexpected battles and untold stories of World War 2 as never seen before starting October 11, 2018 for Origin Access Premier members.

Anthem, a social, connected Action-RPG with cooperative multiplayer at its heart. Players can customize an array of powered Javelin exosuits and team up to face a dangerous and ever-changing world through exploration and combat. Dive into the action starting February 15, 2019 for Origin Access Premier members.

As I mentioned earlier, you'll also get access to a library of older titles too

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Members will also receive the benefits from the current Origin Access Basic membership that already includes an evolving library of 100+ games, including Battlefield 1, Mad Max and the Batman: Arkham series, as well as newly added titles, including Need For Speed Payback, Inside, This Is The Police, Surge and more. Along with a 10% discount on Origin purchases.

Now here's where it gets confusing, notice the 10% discount mentioned above? Well it seems as though you'll only be getting base games for that price. There's been nothing official but IMO EA will still be expecting subscribers to buy DLC as they've stated that you will get access to the Sims 4 but only the digital deluxe content, additional content must have to be bought then?

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Additionally, joining Origin Access Premier will give players a whole new way to play with life through unlimited access to The Sims 4, including content from the Digital Deluxe Update, Dine Out Game Pack and Kids Room Stuff Pack.

Mr Lootbox had the following to say

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Millions of players have experienced the fun of playing more games through our subscription programs, and today we’re taking another groundbreaking step with Origin Access Premier. Origin Access Premier unlocks unprecedented levels of choice and value for players who love PC games. For the first time in a subscription, you’re getting new games like Madden NFL 19, FIFA 19, Battlefield V and Anthem, and full access to more than 100 games from EA and other publishers with a single membership. We’re thrilled to be opening up this new way for players to access great games, with the freedom to play what they want, whenever they want.

Lootbox also announced a new EA service at EA Play where EA games can be streamed to any device.

https://wccftech.com/origin-access-premier-ea-pc/

 

The day before Lootbox announced this Yves Guillemot from Ubisoft was also quoted as saying that Ubisoft thinks streaming games is going to be the end of consoles and will change gaming forever.

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During an interview with Variety, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot claimed the gaming industry is nearing the end of the console era and that streaming is the way of the future.

 

"I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step-by-step we will see less and less hardware,” explained Guillemot. “With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home. There will be one more console generation and then after that, we will be streaming, all of us.”

Even Phil Spencer from Microsoft thinks streaming is the future.

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Guillemot isn’t alone in this console-free, streaming-centric dream. The Executive President of Gaming at Microsoft Phil Spencer seems to share the sentiment. According to Spencer, gaming is “less about having specific devices to play a certain game on, but having your favorite games accessible on any device you have.”

https://twinfinite.net/2018/06/ubisoft-claims-streaming-future-video-games/

 

I take issue with this as the future of gaming for multiple reasons.

 

First is the fact a subscription comes with no guarantees the game you want will be available. You're basically buying a promise.

 

Next is the fact they're basically taking control away from us. It suits them as it eliminates piracy, data mining and modding but from our point of view we're paying to access something, not own something. Any issue at any point in the chain and our games have gone.

 

It's going to cause huge fragmentation, if you want EA games & Ubisoft games you're gonna be paying 2 subscriptions and games will no longer be available everywhere.

 

You're paying for a subscription but then still expected to buy DLC?

 

What about those with poor internet speeds?

 

This is great for the shareholders, it's produces a steady and reliable income to the business and allows them complete control over their products, even after sale but I can't for the life of me figure out how this benefits the consumer?

 

Thoughts?

[captain_to_fire]

Isn’t this is what NVIDIA is trying to do with GeForce Now? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/mac-pc/ 

 

But then there’s the issue of slow internet which is worsened by data caps. So everyone with FTTx (lower latency, less interference, higher bandwidth) can rejoice as long as it’s true unlimited data. 

[asus killer]

fight piracy

if you never get acess to the files you can't pirate, then again as we seen games will eventually die when they are no longer profitable and they shut down servers

 

games as services

no longer making just 60$ (a value that they can't be able to increase anyway) but making much more in the lifetime of the game

 

microtransactions and lootboxes and all that crap

are way more simpler to shove down players throats without players paying the 60$ upfront

 

destroy single player

costs to much money to make and gives a lot less profit than multiplayer, again without the 60$ upfront people will complain less

[EsaT]

37 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Even Phil Spencer from Microsoft thinks streaming is the future.

Yeah... Just like people wanted Windows into phones...

 

Any proper experience streaming game over internet would require quaranteed bandwidth and very low latency data connection.

At time when lots of ISPs are pushing for no bandwidth or latency guaranteed wireless fashion instead of actually building up lot more future proof fiber optic connections.

 

 

This is nothing but PR BS for suckering technically illiterate to becoming automatic corporate cash cows without any real control to content what they're actually paying for.

While made 20 years ago for entirely other things text of this t-shirt still condenses it. Picture is bad but content is written there:

http://shop.effi.org/product/2/choose

[Humbug]

Interesting.

 

Steam is in the best position to move towards streaming. But Valve does not believe in streaming at all. I've seen interviews where they have said it doesn't make sense when as time goes on you can get more and more powerful local hardware for a given price without going Cloud and introducing the added latency.

 

“Let’s say our industry had never done consoles or consumer clients. Even if we just started out with cloud gaming, you’d actually go in the direction of pushing intelligence out to the edge of the network, simply because it’s a great way of caching and saving you on network resources.”

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/07/future-imperfect-valve-still-not-sold-on-cloud-gaming/

 

What they are saying is that distributed  local hardware is actually the utopia, rather than centralized hardware.

[samcool55]

No thanks. Even if the latency is very low i would still prefer everything running native.

Also i hate subscriptions but that might be just me.

[BuckGup]

After using Geforce now I agree 100% with Ubi. Yes you need 100mb/s+ but it's not bad at all. Being able to play GTA V on a macbook air for hours unplugged anywhere is great. Or a cheapo windows PC playing games at 4K 120FPS. 

[DrMacintosh]

Everything is a subscription service and it’s not good

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, asus killer said:

fight piracy

if you never get acess to the files you can't pirate, then again as we seen games will eventually die when they are no longer profitable and they shut down servers

games as services

no longer making just 60$ (a value that they can't be able to increase anyway) but making much more in the lifetime of the game

It worked for music. We used to say piracy wouldn't be as rampant if prices weren't that high; then subscription-based services came and people ended up paying more in the form of "only $0.99 for this" or "$9.99 all you can listen" (which turns out to be less than people expected).

Even if you had access to files, I wouldn't be surprise if they made more money with "all you can play" monthly subscriptions instead of selling games...

 

1 hour ago, asus killer said:

destroy single player

costs to much money to make and gives a lot less profit than multiplayer, again without the 60$ upfront people will complain less

To me, this is like telling me there won't be any more books written or movies filmed. On the one hand, someone somewhere will continue to make them, but the scale will change. Sad. On the other hand, the existing catalogue is probably more than I can consume in my lifetime. Separating good for bad ex-ante is still more of a factor than companies pumping new, sometimes artificially "new" stuff all the time.

 

The good thing about the end of the gaming industry (that is, the part of it that is relevant to me) is that I won't have to worry about future compatibility or hardware upgrades  

[Trik'Stari]

Yves Guillemot can eat my whole ass. Streaming games is a ludicrous idea with the internet being what it is in most of the US. With data caps looming and ISP's unwilling to upgrade their networks even though they're paid to by the US government, it's just not going to work. 

 

My ISP struggles to allow me to play youtube videos at 1080p. And uploading is even more painful. How the hell would I play games being run on their servers?

[TetraSky]

It's "the future" that Ubisoft wants, they want games as a live service.

You truly will not be able to play games without being online. And if your network connection suck ass, like for many of who don't live in large urban centers, no games for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if they still charged you $70 for newer games + monthly service fees for server maintenance.

 

Overall, we all lose and they get richer.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

It's "the future" that Ubisoft wants, they want games as a live service.

You truly will not be able to play games without being online. And if your network connection suck ass, like for many of who don't live in large urban centers, no games for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if they still charged you $70 for newer games + monthly service fees for server maintenance.

 

Overall, we all lose and they get richer.

It's not just Ubisoft though, at this point enough key players are behind it to make it become mainstream and the norm.

[79wjd]

58 minutes ago, Humbug said:

What they are saying is that distributed  local hardware is actually the utopia, rather than centralized hardware.

I mean, that's how the internet already works. Any website/service that handles a lot of traffic colocates with ISPs or backbones in many locations or uses a CDN that hosts their data in many locations. 

[TetraSky]

8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

It's not just Ubisoft though, at this point enough key players are behind it to make it become mainstream and the norm.

I know. Which is most unfortunate.

I for one will never give them any money when they move in that direction.

[Daiyus]

I will never pay to stream a game. Even if my connection was good enough I wouldn't. Digital only was a hard enough pill to swallow. They will not be taking any more of the control I have over the product I paid for.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, BuckGup said:

After using Geforce now I agree 100% with Ubi. Yes you need 100mb/s+ but it's not bad at all. Being able to play GTA V on a macbook air for hours unplugged anywhere is great. Or a cheapo windows PC playing games at 4K 120FPS. 

That's good if you have good internet. If offline gaming ceases to exist as a result though, what about those of us without proper home internet!?

 

I myself am solely on cellular because Comcast is the only option here, and will not be handing that devil of a company any money.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, BuckGup said:

After using Geforce now I agree 100% with Ubi. Yes you need 100mb/s+ but it's not bad at all. Being able to play GTA V on a macbook air for hours unplugged anywhere is great. Or a cheapo windows PC playing games at 4K 120FPS. 

As someone who plays primarily competitive games I would say this type of service won't work for anything that requires low latency which is quite a few games. Yeah it has the potential to be a good console replacement because the console already has some latency issues when connected to a tv and people aren't really worried about it. I doubt any large portion of avid pc gamers will want to use a service like this.

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

As someone who plays primarily competitive games I would say this type of service won't work for anything that requires low latency which is quite a few games. Yeah it has the potential to be a good console replacement because the console already has some latency issues when connected to a tv and people aren't really worried about it. I doubt any large portion of avid pc gamers will want to use a service like this.

Unless the game was streamed and hosted on the same server. Then the issue should largely disappear. 

[MrRavens]

I think it'll be something bigger in the future, but IT will not be THE future. It's like renting vs buying, both are viable depending on your circumstances or what your plans are. 

 

 

[EsaT]

21 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Unless the game was streamed and hosted on the same server. Then the issue should largely disappear. 

Which does nothing to network latency involved in sending player inputs to server and then getting video image back after game engine data processing and rendering of image.

Not to mention rendering any higher resolution image for bigger number of players needing some heavy GPU horsepower.

 

Using PC for doing the heavy lifting for some portable device would be where this streaming concept would work best.

Outside that problems rise fast.

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

As someone who plays primarily competitive games I would say this type of service won't work for anything that requires low latency which is quite a few games. Yeah it has the potential to be a good console replacement because the console already has some latency issues when connected to a tv and people aren't really worried about it. I doubt any large portion of avid pc gamers will want to use a service like this.

If there's no other choice then the decision is already made.

 

41 minutes ago, LtRavens said:

I think it'll be something bigger in the future, but IT will not be THE future. It's like renting vs buying, both are viable depending on your circumstances or what your plans are. 

 

 

Again, if they go all in we have 2 choices, stream or do without.

[yian88]

4 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

Isn’t this is what NVIDIA is trying to do with GeForce Now? https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/mac-pc/ 

 

But then there’s the issue of slow internet which is worsened by data caps. So everyone with FTTx (lower latency, less interference, higher bandwidth) can rejoice as long as it’s true unlimited data. 

 

The future is anything but streaming, it might be only for passive games, like card games where reaction time doesn matter. Anything else is a disaster, i have access to geforce now beta and all games lagg severely, unplayable, LoL, Fortnite, PUBG, all MMO's and online competitive games its a big nono.

The delay is massive, like a monitor with 50-100ms delay, add network latency to the game server into the mix, and in shooting games you will have to shoot 5 + meters ahead of the target to hit it, impossible.

[Master Disaster]

5 minutes ago, yian88 said:

 

The future is anything but streaming, it might be only for passive games, like card games where reaction time doesn matter. Anything else is a disaster, i have access to geforce now beta and all games lagg severely, unplayable, LoL, Fortnite, PUBG, all MMO's and online competitive games its a big nono.

The delay is massive, like a monitor with 50-100ms delay, add network latency to the game server into the mix, and in shooting games you will have to shoot 5 + meters ahead of the target to hit it, impossible.

We understand this, the problem is those in charge at EA, Ubisoft & Microsoft only understand and care about money.

 

When the choice is consumerism or capitalism these corporations will choose the latter 100% of the time, it's literally why they exist.

[CTR640]

1x Ubisoft's greed and 1x EA's greed: double greed!!!! No, just no, Ubisoft was and is still a big time bullshit-talker.

I see Ubisoft and EA as a adorable couple, they should marry each other.

[Guest]

Kek, literally announced the day after I went for Origin Access (Now basic).

Edited June 10, 2018 by Guest