Electronic Arts doubles down on EA Play brand with EA Desktop app

Electronic Arts is launching a new EA Desktop app, a beta version of its revamped Origin online gaming service that the company calls a next-generation PC gaming platform. But the new EA Desktop app is one more app among many in the subscription-loving video game business today. Electronic Arts says the service will have faster downloads and updates, simpler access to games, and the ability to connect with friends across platforms.

Players will use the EA Desktop app to access subscriptions such as the newly renamed EA Play at $5 a month and EA Play Pro at $15 a month. It is another example of how Electronic Arts is getting rid of some older brands like Origin and rallying around its own abbreviated name and the gamer-focused EA Play brand. On August 14th 2020, Electronic Arts said it would rebrand its EA Access and Origin Access subscription game services under the EA Play brand name.

That happened the same week that Amazon rebranded its Twitch Prime membership service as Prime Gaming, with the goal of reaching a broader audience. The EA Desktop app is being designed to deliver a frictionless and socially connected experience that is faster for players to get into their games, Electronic Arts has revealed some of this, but not all of it. The new EA Desktop app promises a faster experience, fewer clicks to jump back into your favorite games, and Playtime Controls to help you keep tabs on how much time you and your family spend playing.

You should find it easier to find and install new games or just play via your EA Play membership.

Electronic Arts is also rolling out new benefits for EA Play and EA Play Pro subscription members. Anyone can register for the beta, and Electronic Arts is sending out download invitations on a first-come, first-served basis. If you are an Origin player, your games, progress, and friends will carry over. You will keep full access to all of your Origin content.

In the long term, Electronic Arts wants its games to be platform-agnostic. This move aligns to the strategy, which is to help players play Electronic Arts games more effectively. The things that players are seeing in market, such as our EA Play gaming subscriptions, are designed to help break down barriers to play. Gamer will start seeing more and more of Electronic Arts games be cross-play enabled, not just games that are in the portfolio that are moving towards cross-play, but games that are coming that will be cross-play by default.

Epic Games is one step ahead in cross-play with Fortnite, which allows people to play with each other across PC, console, and mobile devices, except iOS because of a lawsuit between Epic and Apple. The reality is that they all align to the same objective, which is to help players play, so bringing the brands together under one experience just made sense. EA Play Pro is the top tier, where players can play games under a subscription on the same day that those games launch.

EA Play, meanwhile, gives access to older games.

The Origin name is going away, becoming the EA Desktop app. If you are wondering what the big rage is about game subscriptions, everybody wants to create the “Netflix of gaming”. It helps with the discovery of new games, as players will try out more games when the cost of doing so drops to zero. What subscriptions offer is an ability for people to try games that they may not have ever tried.

In many cases, it reduces the barrier for them to play a game that they might want to play on an ongoing basis for which they might have to pay on a yearly basis at a much higher price point. So they may buy a game one year, but then not buy the new version of that game the next year because it is expensive to keep buying games. Electronic Arts values providing great experiences to players and value their engagement time, and the more opportunities the company can offer them to play the game, is a mutually beneficial relationship between the company and the players.

Subscriptions can also energize players by giving them access to a title ahead of the time when others can access it. Players might only access this game if they are offered it in this fashion. It is a little bit hard to predict what will come to the forefront. There is a very strong role for a subscription to play. That is why Electronic Arts continues to invest in it.

That is why Microsoft is investing in it.

That is why virtually every platform company is investing in it because it is valuable for a company to do so. The Origin name has been around a long time, ever since Electronic Arts bought Richard Garriott’s Ultima studio in 1992. Electronic Arts shut that studio down in 2004. But Electronic Arts launched its Origin online gaming service in 2011 as its own platform in the digital game distribution business.

It was less about the Origin name and more about how Electronic Arts is on a journey to offer players choice in how they choose to play. Perpetuating a variety of different brands does not serve Electronic Arts or its players as well anymore. Electronic Arts is trying to make as many connection points across its games as possible, even if the company can not make cross-play, cross-progression, and cross-generation play possible on every game.

If a company is delivering a similar game experience across multiple different devices, it is important to be able to let those players play together. Electronic Arts knows that players are switching between different platforms and that there is a new generation of consoles coming out. The Switch has emerged as a leading platform, and players might own another console as well.

In some Electronic Arts games, players can be on different platforms and still play against each other.

Apex Legends players can enjoy cross-play on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the Windows PC. Cross-progression, where you can switch from one platform to another and access your same game level, is not yet supported. One of the things Electronic Arts is doing is centralizing around a common brand. The vision is connecting players in an Electronic Arts ecosystem, whether through EA Play on the EA Desktop app or other ways that the company can make it frictionless and convenient.

Electronic Arts recently made EA games available on Valve’s Steam service, and it added EA Access to the Microsoft Xbox Game Pass service at no extra cost. Players are demanding this kind of world, as they have seen with services like Netflix or Spotify, which run on just about any device. The players want gaming to work like other entertainment subscriptions.

The experience of gaming is fluid, and it does not begin or end in the same way that it once did. Whether playing on a mobile device, PC, console, cloud, or subscription, players are demanding a more seamless, connected ecosystem.