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EA explains Origin exclusives
by Andrew Yoon, Jun 28, 2011 4:45pm PDTWhile today's release of free Shift 2 DLC on Origin may have won some gamers over, EA has a long way to go before it can convince the masses to switch to its new digital storefront--especially given the lofty goals the publisher has placed on the service. EA's Frank Gibeau told GI.biz that "we're the worldwide leader in packaged goods publishing, we'd like to be the worldwide leader in digital publishing."
But how will EA manage to oust rivals in an area where Steam is such a clear leader? Through exclusives, of course. Gibeau is careful to point out that it's not EA's goal to alienate its partners. "We are going to continue to be great partners for our retail channel partners and as they evolve their business models to account for digital." However, the only way to properly expand Origin is to restrict content from other channels. "But at the same time you talk about platform exclusives like Halo or Uncharted, EA's going to have some of our own platform exclusives."
One of the big exclusives for the platform is the upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Gibeau is not shy to admit that this is a game meant to attract people to the platform, not the other way around. "In the case of Star Wars we're trying to build an audience for Origin." But why Star Wars? "For a lot of reasons it made sense for an MMO, which is a highly complex deployment... it's also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing." Unfortunately, Gibeau didn't go into detail on how Origin would make this process better for users.
EA is taking a gamble by restricting the audience of The Old Republic to those that opt to participate in its platform. However, at least some can take comfort in knowing that EA may not keep the gates closed off for long. "I think long-term you'll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for out products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible."
Comments
EA has a long way to go before it can convince the masses to switch to its new digital storefront, Origin. It plans on winning gamers through exclusives, like Star Wars: The Old Republic.
EA has a long way to go before it can convince the masses to switch to its new digital storefront, Origin. It plans on winning gamers through exclusives, like Star Wars: The Old Republic. : Shacknews
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Origin has a few things over Steam that a vocal minority want, though. Namely, it looks like you don't need to keep the client running in the background in order to play the game. Most new EA games have EA account login screens built right into main menu, which I suppose is their form of "DRM" for online games. Valve can't really do this with Steam as it's publisher-agnostic. But, Valve freely provides Steamworks for developers/publishers who wish to implement it.
Also, prices in certain regions are more on-par with the retail prices. This is odd, though... considering that EA can set its own prices on Steam.
Other than that, Origin is heavily lacking. It's a glorified download manager that doesn't really offer much over Steam. The install process just downloads the setup files and prompts you to click through the usual install steps as if you were installing from a CD. It doesn't look like patches are handled by Origin, either. Even when you update the fucking Origin client you need to go through the install steps as if you downloaded an installer off the site. It's a lazy attempt.
Minus the lame "social" features, it's just another re-branded version of EADM.
While Steam has been progressively getting better since its initial release in 2003, EA sat on their asses until 2005 when they launched EA Downloader. The year after that they rebranded it as EA Link... the year after that it was rebranded as EA Download Manager. 4 to 5 years later Origin is released and it still pretty much does the same fucking thing.
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