EA confirms more platform exclusives for Origin
Online retail store will benefit from unique content; EA aims to be "the worldwide leader in digital publishing"
Electronic Arts has confirmed that it will release more titles digitally exclusive to its Origin service, as well as offer unique content for games sold via Origin to distinguish them from releases on competing services.
However, the aggressive move isn't a sign EA is ready to ditch its other digital partners such as Direct2Drive and Impulse, as it still intends to reach the widest audience possible through other retailers.
"We are going to continue to be great partners for our retail channel partners as they evolve their business models to account for digital," Frank Gibeau, president of EA Games, told GamesIndustry.biz.
"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."
At the same time you talk about platform exclusives like Halo or Uncharted, EA's going to have some of our own platform exclusives
Frank Gibeau, EA Games
The publisher has already confirmed forthcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will only be available digitally from Origin, with Gibeau admitting it's using the Bioware title to attract new consumers to the rebooted service.
"In the case of Star Wars we're trying to build an audience for Origin. And 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. For a lot of reasons it made sense for an MMO, which is a highly complex deployment.
"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.
"But at the same time if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we're going to do that because we're growing a platform," added Gibeau.
The recently released Crysis 2 has been removed from Valve's Steam service, and other PC versions of titles including Alice: Madness Returns are being positioned as "only on Origin" on the official website.
But EA wants to get across the message that Origin is more than a retail site, and will evolve with community features borne from the company's history in games creation.
"For us it's really about, we're the worldwide leader in packaged goods publishing, we'd like to be the worldwide leader in digital publishing.
"And we think that EA has unique strengths there related to what we can do with our content, because we're a content creator as well as a retailer in this business. But in general it's not just a retail site, it's a community, it's a platform, it has traits much like you see with Steam or PSN or Xbox Live, but it's unique to EA.
This seems like such a money move. EA could simply keep their games on steam at their current price and then just offer them at a slightly lower price on Origin to encourage people to buy direct from them. That way, people like me who already have a large library of games on Steam would have the option of buying there (at a small premium) whilst others who just want a good deal could buy direct from EA. But why do that when you can just alienate a large portion of your customer base to try and scrape out an extra few dollars per game?
As for having 'platform exclusives' I think EA have shown a fundamental lack of understanding about the PC audience. I love consoles but have always primarily been a PC gamer. One thing I've always hated about consoles is that if I want to play all the best games, I need a pile of consoles in the corner of my living room instead of just my console of choice. I have never once thought to myself "I wish PC gaming were more like this. I always felt like my desktop needed to be cluttered up with another half dozen needless icons for services I might only use to buy one game a year"
If it works, well done EA but for now I’m really doubtful about this move, and as a consumer I am extremely pissed at this. As I absolutely don’t want to install another platform, my only choices as a gamer are going to either by a retail version of an EA game or just skip it (Crysis 2 I’ll never get the chance to play you…)
Nothing has changed for me. Any games that aren't on Steam, I will buy the physical copy.
It seems that it's going to be EA vs (everybody else on Steam), and that's not a very sensible battle on EA's part.
competition is good.
i'm confused.
oh.
"Crysis(R) 2
Available as Direct Download
£34.99 incl. VAT
Platform: PC"
go fuck yourselves EA.
£34.99 - for a digital copy?
asshats.
I think we simply are looking at a future where digital retail is more fragmented, as undesirable as that is from a consumer point of view. It might take something more disruptive to shake things up a bit - I could have envisioned OnLive as something like the Spotify of the games world, but I think they're being hobbled by the triumverate of cost, performance, and a poor catalogue / lack of publisher support (and this may never change, with so many big publishers now having skin in the digital retail game).
EA should continue with the EADM/Origin feature of buying a Retail Disc and activating the Key on it to get a digital copy.
In any case I am not suprised of EA move and I am sure we will see more publishers doing the same in the near future. Premium SKU will be the way for publishers to go direct leaving the standard edition to other channels. This has been done already at retail.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Andrea D'Orta on 15th June 2011 7:12pm
erm... did you just copy and paste my comment from Eurogamer?
:O
[link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-15-ea-origin-compares-to-xbl-psn-steam
]http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-0...[/link]
"actionfitz
15/06/11 @ 15:06
#12
+13
From the origin store:
"Crysis(R) 2
Available as Direct Download
£34.99 incl. VAT
Platform: PC"
go fuck yourselves EA.
£34.99 - for a digital copy?
asshats."
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Aidan Fitzpatrick on 15th June 2011 7:49pm
I guess they know that less people are going to buy it now.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Alan Pierce on 15th June 2011 8:02pm
Not a smart move. What about a Jedi/Sith Collector's Edition? Throwing away money that freely?
good idea EA but if this doesn't work...
EA reps tell Kotaku that it was Steam’s “business terms” that resulted in Crysis 2 being removed from Valve’s platform.
“It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis II from their service,” reads a statement from the publisher. “This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.”
“Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis II from Steam. ”
“Crysis II continues to be available on several other download services including Origin.com.”
Kotaku has contacted Valve seeking clarification on Steam’s business terms and the future availability of EA games through Steam.
[link url=http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/06/ea-says-it-was-valve-who-expelled-crysis-2-from-steam/#more-451400
]http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/06/ea-says...[/link]
Their launches are swarmed with dubious statements and marketing lies and at the same time riddled with bad grammar. A statement trying to say that a digital version of the game will only be available on origin, will often sound as if there was only a digital version on a digital platform and nothing else. The exact same thing happened early this week to ArenaNet when suddenly people were mass tweeting that they too were not selling any retail box, which is, of course, bollocks.
Worst of all for the customer is that no matter how many online shops there are, there seems to be no pressure on prices or any competition. It is like having ten overpriced fashion boutiques all of a sudden, instead of two.
For my and for EA's sake, I hope that I'll be able to find two English retail boxes for SWTOR here in Germany - otherwise this translates into lost sales on a base level.
Seriously, I get the lure with exclusive content (such as fancy new hats for your characters), but I think refusing to sell a game on other major digital download platforms is a rather idiotic move. Unless they're setting SWTOR up to fail, which would be a shame. Hello, memories of Warhammer!
However, the success of exlusive, highly anticipated games like SWTOR is going to be crucial for origin to build up a user-base and survive...