EA Refocusing Origin To Be A “Service To Gamers”

According to EA’s executive vice president, Andrew Wilson, the company is currently planning to reestablish its Origin platform as “a service to gamers” rather than “a means to drive transactions”.

Wilson, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, admitted that Origin’s transactions focus was a shortcoming that prevented users of it from recognising its value.

“I think the transaction component of that service has taken a disproportionate amount of the communication and mindshare of what we really try and provide, and the barrier that that puts in between you and the game that you want to play,” he said.

In order to address this, Wilson claimed that EA plans to return to the roots of the Origin concept and deliver a service that compliments what is provided by Sony and Microsoft.

“What we really had in mind in the early days was a service that made your EA games better; a service that made it easy to access games and update games,” he said.

“A service that enhanced the experience of playing games, a service that helped you connect to other friends playing games, and a service that ultimately did that across all platforms, not just PC.”

“What you want is a complementary service that enhances your game experience irrespective of where you made the transaction. That’s the shift you’re going to see from us.”

Wilson went on to concede that EA does face an uphill battle to change gamer perceptions.

“I am not so naïve as to believe we will change that perception quickly,” he added.

“It’s very important for people to understand that we don’t expect that all of a sudden people are going to get up and go ‘Oh! Great! We now love Origin!'”

“What we would say is, ‘We get it. We understand it. We have heard, we have made some changes already in terms of how we do things, and we’re looking at more changes that we’ll talk about over the coming months that really are gamer-focused.'”

For me, it’s quite simple. Origin doesn’t give me enough reason to want to use the service. Speaking from the perspective of PC, it just adds yet another platform I’m forced to use, except unlike Steam, this one doesn’t feel rewarding. One needs only to browse through the store and see how games such as Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter and Need for Speed Most Wanted are still selling for full retail price, despite the fact that three of these games are failing financially.

At least EA acknowledges that it needs to step up. Let’s see where they go from here.

Name: Azhar Lorgat
Location: Cape Town
Position: Potato

Azhar has published 3571 posts. Read all of Azhar's posts.

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