Origin Needs to Be More Sticky and Social, EA Says

Electronic Arts has once again talked about its Origin digital distribution platform and has revealed that it wants to make it more social by allowing users to interact with others through a variety of ways, especially in the games they own.

Origin went online last year and, since then, EA has been trying hard to make the experience as pleasant as possible in order to steal some market share from the most popular digital distribution service out there – Steam.

After emphasizing that its service is a success and that games are selling well, EA has now talked about the potential features it wants to add, with the company’s Senior Vice President of Global E-Commerce, David DeMartini, sharing his thoughts with GameSpot.

"Being self-critical of Origin, I would say it's not sticky enough. And we want to put features in place where we fully take advantage of your friends lists and gameplay activities amongst all of your friends so you can compare achievements," he said.

"We want you to be able to challenge your friends, and to challenge your friends to play other EA games to try and achieve things that might even be across EA games. A lot of people are loyal to us and we need to reward them with that stickiness, so we're looking in that direction."

Until EA is ready to deploy such new features, DeMartini says fans should continue to provide constructive criticism for the service, as EA believes this attention means they care about it.

"I think people have been critical of our efforts. And usually, we really appreciate their criticism. When you start a service, if nobody says anything about you, they don't care about you, and you're irrelevant. I would not say that's the case with Origin. There are many people with opinions about Origin: where we should go, about features we've deployed," he added.

While many still prefer Steam, it’s great to hear that Origin is still going to be improved.