Back in 2020, during its June EA Play Live event, Electronic Arts revealed that certain games in its line-up would now come with "Dual Entitlement", but what does that mean? And how could it save you money?

Here we explain what EA's Dual Entitlement is, its relevance to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and the currently announced games it applies to.

What is EA Dual Entitlement?

Dual Entitlement is much like Xbox's Smart Delivery scheme, whereby you purchase a older-generation console game and get an upgrade to the next-gen version for free, when you opt to buy one of the forthcoming, new consoles.

Where it differs to Smart Delivery is that it works across PlayStation and Xbox machines. As Smart Delivery is an Xbox incentive, it naturally only applies between Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

Therefore, if you purchase an EA game with Dual Entitlement, not only can you get the Xbox Series X upgrade if you bought it on Xbox One, you get the PS5 version if you bought it on PS4 first. And at no extra cost.

Is there a catch?

So far, the only catch is that if you purchase a disc version of a game for PS4 or Xbox One, you will only be able to upgrade it on a PS5 or Xbox Series X with a disc drive.

That means that if you upgrade to a PS5 Digital Edition, you will only be able to use the Dual Entitlement benefit to upgrade a digital download PS4 version of the game.

What games have Dual Entitlement?

Whether a game has Dual Entitlement, a couple of years down the line, now depends on EA's strategy. For some titles, the benefit is now locked behind more expensive editions of the game, to get an extra £5 or £10 out of you, while for some others it's baked in.

We recommend that you read the fingerprint and check how Dual Entitlement will work before you buy an EA game right now, if you know you'd like to upgrade your console soon!