14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Electronic Arts has worked hard to push its digital distribution service Origin but a number of analysts watching the video game market believe that the effort is not enough to make it more relevant than Steam from Valve.
Speaking to IndustryGamer David Cole, who is an analyst working for DFC Intelligence, stated, “EA does have a great deal of consumers that use their products so they are in a good position to act as a distributor to those consumers. That is basically how Steam got started, as a way to distribute to players of Valve games which they naturally leveraged for other games.”
He believes that the Electronic Arts strategy for Origins is essentially correct but that the service was launched too late to make a huge impact.
Billy Pidgeon, who works for M2 Research, added, “I’d agree that EA isn’t competing with Steam, but neither is any other publisher or retailer. When it comes to digital retail, Steam is peerless. I don’t see any open online marketplaces doing this yet, outside of subscription and free-to-play models, and next generation games on demand such as OnLive and Gaikai.”
Michael Pachter, who is linked to Wedbush Morgan, has added that most players will only switch from Steam to Origin if the Valve service suffers a big problem, something like a bigger version of last week's security issues, or if Electronic Arts delivers significantly lower prices.
Electronic Arts has made Origin necessary for those who plan to run games like the Battlefield 3 first person shooter and the upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and has also added titles from third party developers like Warner Bros and Capcom.
Still the catalog of Origin is dwarfed by that of Steam and the Electronic Arts service is not yet offering any functionality that cannot be found in the Steam product.