14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking to Screenplay Peter Moore, who is the Chief Operations Officer at Electronic Arts, has stated, “Like any piece of software, you launch and continue to polish it, upgrade it, get feedback and make it better. That’s where we are with Origin. We’re only four and a half months in and already over five million people are using it on a daily basis.”
The executive believes that the launch of the big first person shooter from DICE, Battlefield 3, will be the first big test of the both the commercial and the infrastructure side of Origin.
He added, “And that’s why we did the beta. We’re not afraid. Betas are always risky things because your painting is only half painted, you don’t quite know where it will finish up, but you show people for free before it’s finished and people criticize.”
Moore says that he understands why some players were frustrated with how the Battlefield 3 beta stage was implemented but he says that the experience was valuable to the teams at DICE and EA.
He says the company is interested in implementing features more quickly, including on the Origin digital distribution device, in order to see how their customers react to it and to be then able to tweak them to satisfy the public.
Origin will have a tough time challenging the current leader of the digital distribution field, Steam from Valve, which by some estimates has more than 70 percent of the market (the company does not release officially figures).
Electronic Arts has hinted that a number of high profile games, including Battlefield 3 and the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, will be coming exclusively through Origin in order to persuade gamers to create accounts.
EA has also hinted that it will offer more social networking features on its digital distribution service in the near future.