Bay 12 Games Forum

I have a fairly good idea why, mclay, but it's not my place to say.

Shacknews Article

EA looks like it wants to muscle in on some of the action with PC digital and online gaming with the launch of Origin, its own digital game distributor, which is a smart move considering the PC gaming market continues to grow, but retail sales are absolutely dismal. It’s been made absolutely clear in the past few years that digital distribution for PC is king. With a third party digital distributor like Valve’s Steam, a gamer can buy a game and be downloading it within the same minute—often for much cheaper than the game’s retail counterpart. Not to mention, Steam and Microsoft’s Games for Windows LIVE offer achievements to keep gamers’ egos warm, fuzzy, and well-stroked. Nothing says return customers like happy customers. Retail doesn’t even stand a chance.

As it stands, Steam has a tight fist on digital distribution. According to Forbes, Valve is estimated to hold about 50-70% of the digital market share, although its refusal to publish sales figures makes this number a bit of a wild stab in the dark. EA has the trouble of pitting Origin against not only Steam, but also other rising 3rd party competitors such as Amazon and Gamestop, who are beginning to take a crack at Steam’s market dominance.

Microsoft had tried to compete with Steam with Games for Windows LIVE (even if Microsoft claims to not) and pretty much, well… failed. It does have a small portion of the market share (if only because it is forced upon certain games, even those bought off Steam), but it still has nowhere near the popularity that Steam does with PC gamers, even after being around for four years on the market. (This doesn’t count Games on Demand, which was launched in December 2009, of course.) Then again, Microsoft made a critical mistake by doing a sloppy job with Games. It’s an obvious cut-and-paste from Xbox Live and once even bore “Xbox login” on its login page. Not exactly a good way to try and win over PC gamers, especially the hardcore ones who swear by PC gaming, and only PC gaming.

The only way I see EA’s Origin service really taking off, or at least enough to be profitable, is if they expand their gaming distribution to rival Steam’s and have their application be better than Steam’s. Their gaming distribution is going to launch with a dismal 150 titles, no doubt all related to EA. Although this is pretty good for an initial launch, they’re going to have to touch bases with (ahem, pay off) other publishers and developers to get them to put their titles on Origin. One of the reasons why Steam is so popular is that it’s a relatively cheap and easy way for indie developers to distribute their games. EA is going to have to find a way to provide a similar service.

There really isn’t much of a compromise in this case, unless they decide to force Origin on all gamers who buy EA games, just as Microsoft has done with Games for Windows LIVE. Otherwise, whether or not they’re really looking to compete with Steam, they’ve already taken off their gloves, promptly smacked Valve in the face, and declared a duel at noon, because otherwise gamers will continue to buy from Steam. EA is going to have to pull its games off of Steam (which I think is unlikely since it would be an extremely unpopular move), offer lower prices, or offer exclusive content worthwhile enough to draw gamers away from Steam, or at least enough to start buying EA games from Origin. Even then, I know most PC gamers won’t make the move or only do so after much bitching since having two applications for gaming that don’t in anyway relate to each other is a bit of a hassle. I think EA realizes this and it’s the only reason it’s offering The Old Republic exclusively on Origin as some sort of desperate move to try and draw some users. If all other publishers pick up and decide to do the same thing as EA, users are going to have to put up with opening up seven different applications to play different games. It’s why many gamers go for Steam in the first place over other distributors. All games, achievements, user-specific settings, profiles, and a chat service that integrates decently into games are all in one place. And since Steam has been around for a while, EA’s going to have to the beast that is customer loyalty.

Not all hope is lost for EA, however. If it offers decent enough cross-platform support, particularly with mobile devices, which Valve has yet to integrate with Steam, it may be able to win a gamer base that games on multiple consoles who won’t necessarily stick with Steam if EA provides better prices and perks for playing mini-games on different platforms.

We’ll see how EA’s Origin application initially compares with Steam, as it is set to launch tomorrow on June 3rd.

My thoughts? Origin is gonna sink fast, especially since they're limiting TOR to this thing. I'm stoked for TOR, but I know I won't be buying it if I have to install some POS Steam knockoff in order to play.

Hm. Plot 34 looks kinda like Africa is you stand at the east end and look west.

I'm still working on designing the building.

-shrug-

I haven't been on in a while, so eh.

I'm all hooked up with a grappling hook now, thanks to Umiman. In other news, I can host a server on my laptop now. I may or may not post in the server thread.

...the ancient, trap-filled ruins of the Dwarven Mountainhomes.

I'm in.