14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the variety of titles that it is working on and launching publisher Electronic Arts always aims high, trying to get an average Metacritic score of more than 90 for all its titles.
David DeMartini, who is the senior vice president in charge of developing the Origin digital distribution service, has told MCV that, “EA is in a really interesting place. We have this bar that is set so high, so that whether it is any of our games or services, we want to be 90 plus Metacritic at everything.”
He added, “Origin is moving in that direction. We are not there yet. We understand that. But we are going to get there soon.”
The Origin digital distribution service has been introduced one year ago and many industry watchers believed that it would fail to get any traction with players because it did not offer any important feature that Steam lacked.
Since then Electronic Arts has made a number of high-profile releases, from the action and role-playing mix Mass Effect 3 to the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, arrive exclusive on Origin, which basically forced a large number of players to install and then use it.
The launch of Origin has been linked to Steam dropping some titles from EA because they no longer complied with the Terms of Service, which some suggested marked the beginning of a war between the two services.
Since then both Valve and Electronic Arts have made it clear that they plan to compete, but they will not create situations where gamers are affected by a lack of choice and find they are unable to buy their favorite games.
Origin originally had plans to create a complex social element, allowing for different users to find friends and create groups, but it seems that those plans are on hold at the moment.