Origin Will Be the Only Online Retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Electronic Arts, in a move to centralize their PC products, has announced and released a new digital download service called Origin, effectively replacing the EA Store. Predominantly a digital service, Origin will also allow users to place orders for boxed copies across platforms.
In a bid to increase the new service's popularity, EA also confirmed that Origin will be the sole online seller of Star Wars: The Old Republic when the game launches later this year.
Origin, like Valve's Steam, has a strong social networking feature that allows users to communicate with friends, see what games they are playing, and do all of this across a variety of devices (unlike Steam). Users can even perform actions on mobile devices that will affect the larger EA games on consoles and personal computers.
EA CEO John Riccitiello told the Wall Street Journal that Origin is going to be a cornerstone in EA's digital strategy, which saw revenue of $833 million for the company in March of 2011. A large portion of that profit came from Playfish, the social networking site and casual games publisher which EA bought in 2009 for over $275 million. Wonder if that payed off?
You can check out Origin (in Beta form) at www.origin.com.
