14 DAY TRIAL // Origin, the Electronic Arts supported digital distribution service, might not be as popular as Valve’s Steam, but the publisher is interested in offering gamers an alternative and not just a perfect clone service.
In order to show the type of relation between Steam and Origin, DeMartini told Gamasutra that, “Battlefield 3 isn’t Call of Duty. Battlefield 3 is great, it’s a shooter, but it’s a great shooter in its own right. I want Origin to be the exact same thing. That doesn’t mean Call of Duty is bad.
“I don’t want to see Steam become bad. They’re a partner. They do a lot of good things. What I want is Origin to be differentiable and better as a service, which is similar to what Steam does.”
When asked directly about how Origin plans to differentiate itself from Steam, DeMartini gave a complex answer that involves the “multiplatform” concept, possibly meaning that in the coming months we might see an announcement about EA moving its digital distribution service to home consoles and other devices.
DeMartini added, “Give us a few more years, and maybe we’ll be better than Steam. Steam took eight years to get where it is. We’re not going to take eight years, but we’re going to get there and go beyond.”
Earlier during the year, rumors suggested that Valve was working to create a SteamBox that would be linked directly to a television set and allow gamers to play titles they owned.
Another unsubstantiated rumor suggested that the company was working with Nintendo to bring Steam to the new Wii U hardware.
Meanwhile, the main way to promote Origin so far has been through exclusive releases, with titles like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic only coming to the PC via the Electronic Arts service.
EA also announced that it would make it easier for indie developers to use Origin.