EA Launching Service to Rival Steam

[Dangy]

Game publishing giant Electronic Arts is set to take on Valve's Steam with the launch of its own digital distribution platform, dubbed Origin. According to a report on the Wall Street Journal, the new service functions as a single store and gaming platform on the PC that will let customers "purchase, download and keep track of" their games.

Sauce


I say, good luck, but I doubt they'll surpass Steam. Hopefully it will bring some competition to Steam and lower prices even more.

 

[skawo96]

Well, how unORIGINal.

yuck yuck.

 

[Satangel]

They jumped the boat years too late if you ask me.... Steam has been around for almost 10 years and the ongoing broadband distribution all over the world only makes them stronger and stronger.
Still EA can do some serious damage with the likes of Battlefield, NFS and all those sportsgames.

 

[SylvWolf]

They've had the EA Download Manager for a while, so I guess this is just gonna add other games? I doubt it's gonna succeed.

 

[BobTheJoeBob]

I doubt this is gonna surpass steam, or come even close to be honest. I doubt it will even get a larger game library than Steam. But you never know, we'll find out soon enough.

 

[Ikki]

Is it going to sell EA games only?
If so, it's gonna fail to compete with Steam miserably.

 

[Minox]

I have a few reasons why I think this won't work out. First one is that people do not want 5 million different clients - they'd rather stick with one good. Second reason is because I find it unlikely for EA to attract a lot of publishers to their new digital distribution platform. And unless they somehow offer some kind of advantage over the Steam I don't see why people would be willing to switch.

Still EA can do some serious damage with the likes of Battlefield, NFS and all those sportsgames.

If EA ends up not releasing proper versions of those games on Steam then I'm unlikely to buy them at all. Your loss EA.

 

[Sausage Head]

i consider this as adware that gets installed when you want to play a game

 

[SamAsh07]

Never used Steam cuz of lack of a CC, and now this. I don't know if EA will surpass steam or not, but kudos to them for even trying to rival Steam.

 

[injected11]

I'll be sticking with Steam.

 

[Valwin]

i hope it finally destroy the steam monopoly cuz in my opinion is killing gaming

 

[Maz7006]

we are all so negative ...

Consider the likely event this IS good; only can wait and see

no i don't work for EA; im just saying .

The likes are that some EA games will use this for game updates and such ; yet im sure you can still go for the same steam version ... potentially with steam your only buying a CD key ... you can choose NOT to use their servers to download the game ; but some games use steam as their p2p backbone for online gameplay - the cod's are all i can think of

also not to mention steam's superior VAC banning / well sort of.

 

[purplesludge]

i hope it finally destroy the steam monopoly cuz in my opinion is killing gaming

how so?

 

[ThatDudeWithTheFood]

Probably will be really buggy like early steam but its gonna take a long time before it cant even dream of beating steam.

 

[doyama]

i hope it finally destroy the steam monopoly cuz in my opinion is killing gaming

I've not quite understood the logic of this? Exactly how is Steam 'killing' gaming? Don't say any of the following

1) DRM!!!!11!!!! This is a publisher/developer issue, and is not unique to do with Steam. Steam's DRM is not nearly as heavy handed as most other implementations, and doesn't cause your computer to die just because it's running. I've only had issues with DRM that ran ON TOP of Steam.
2) I have to be online to play. Semi-legitimate, but considering almost all games are online/coop based is this an issue? Also Steam has an offline mode so again not a huge problem even if your game is single player.
3) It's adware. Considering you can run Steam game via shortcuts, and if you use the game browser it has no ads. It seems odd to claim that Steam is adware.

Probably the only legitimate complaint is the fact that you can't resell games. But this is becoming more of an industry wide issue. DLC, Online-Pass, etc are all becoming much more common, making the used gaming market much less appealing in general. You already can't resell PSN/Xbox live games and such.

For me the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages

1) More money goes to publisher/developer which means more money for future games. This encompasses not having to print and ship stuff to retailers who take a cut of that $50 game.
2) No longer beholden to large retailers who'd rather stock their shelves with the latest My Little Pony DS game than Civilization 5.
3) Auto patching. Yes I LOVE hunting around for the latest patch of game whats-its-face. Or constantly refreshing the game's website to see if one was released today.
4) Real data to publishers/devs means they'll continue to make games. Steam games are actual PURCHASED items at retail, rather than the usual number of 'shipped to retailers' number. Means you can more easily justify putting resources into a PC game because you have hard data about how well your previous games did at retail.

 

[Defiance]

The fact that Valve is a superior company in pretty much every way to EA proves that this new service will fail in comparison.

 

[Hero-Link]

Don't feed the trolls people!

whoever says steam is killing anything is just trolling. If anything steam brought back life to computer gaming, with it's amazing deals and a DRM design that actually WORKS!

A place where indies can put their games to get a little more noticed.

 

[doyama]

With the above EA probably should follow Activision and provide some kind of "Elite" subscription model.

The CoD Elite whatever the hell it is, only makes sense because it provides something extra that is not possible on the CONSOLE side. Mainly map analysis, communities, and group/clan features that don't exist on equivalently on the console side. Yes it's silly since Steam does all of the above, for free, for TF2. So I can see the console people diving into it, but on the PC side there are already tons of tools and things available to do what you need.

I think it would make sense, for EA to integrate their bigger IP titles into the platform in some kind of unique community based system. But right now their "Origin" thing is just a rebranded version of their incredibly crappy online store and EA Downloader. This is extremely uncompelling... At least the CoD Elite thing made sense from a financial perspective (constant stream of income from people) and in exchange provided some kind of value (community and clan/group support). Putting a different sticker on their existing EA store doesn't actually compel anyone to go there for their purchases.

 

[doyama]

Also WHY THE HELL DID THEY CALL IT ORIGIN?!?!

The only thing that reminds me of is that they KILLED Origin Systems. Bastards...

 

[ShadowSoldier]

There's absolutely no reason why this should fail. It should succeed. Maybe not take top spot as digital store, but get up there. If other sites are still up and running against steam this can work. I'd love to see this succeed.

They have great franchises, they have Mass Effect, Need for Speed, NHL, Burnout, Mirrors Edge, Dante's Inferno, Battlefield...

seriously, they could easily make a dent in the digital market.