E3 2011: The Wall Street Journal reports the megapublisher is readying a Steam-like store to sell 150+ games directly and offer social networking; will be sole online seller of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Though Electronic Arts’
Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference isn’t until Monday at 12:30 p.m. PDT, the
Wall Street Journal has pre-empted a major announcement by the megapublisher. The financial daily is reporting that EA is planning to soon unveil Origin, a new PC game-download service along the lines of Valve Software’s Steam. The name appears unrelated to Origin Systems, the Ultima and Wing Commander developer EA bought in 1992 and then closed in 2004.
According to the Journal, Origin will function like Steam, insofar that it will let gamers directly purchase, download, and organize PC titles. The service will start out with a catalog over 150 offerings when it launches, and will be the sole online purveyor of Star Wars: The Old Republic when that game
goes online (presumably) later this year. The publisher is reportedly hoping the exclusive availability of the eagerly awaited sci-fi massively multiplayer online role-playing game will boost the nascent service’s popularity.
Like
Activision’s just-announced Call of Duty: Elite service, Origin will also reportedly have a strong social networking element that will allow players to communicate about their game experiences across a variety of devices via a single profile. Also like Elite, Origin will reportedly let players perform actions on mobile or other platforms that affect full-fledged games. David DeMartini, EA’s senior vice president of global online, gave the example of a sharp-shooting “Battlefield” minigame on a mobile phone yielding experience points that could be used in the regular version of a Battlefield game. (Curiously, the full-fledged platform mentioned was the Xbox 360, not the PC.)
EA CEO John Riccitiello told the Journal that Origin is one of the “cornerstones” of EA’s digital strategy. That tack has been paying dividends for the company, which saw $833 million in digital revenue during the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2011–over 20 percent of EA’s overall earnings. A good chunk of that came from Playfish, the social-networking and casual game publisher
that EA bought in 2009 for over $275 million. Other sources of digital revenue include EA’s various Facebook games, such as Dragon Age Legends, as well as the publisher’s current direct-to-consumer digital download presence, the
EA Store.
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