Origin will not undermine retailers according to Electronic Arts
Over the past few years there has been an emerging trend as to how digital media is distributed, from movies to songs and, more recently, to video games.
One of, if not the largest publishers in the video game industry, Electronic Arts (EA) is in the advanced stages of implementing their own digital media distribution platform for PC users. Aptly named Origin, the service will provide all the EA developed
content gamers would want to get their hands on.
EA has a number of world’s most popular franchises, from the best selling football simulation series, FIFA, to the most revered multiplayer first person shooter game, Battlefield. It also has the likes of the immense Need for Speed, NFL, Crysis and Burnout
series under its belt.
However, a majority of the sales of the titles up to this point have been in the form of BluRay Discs and DVDs, which the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii/PC run respectively. During recent weeks, a trend has emerged where publishers and distributors
are giving digital distribution an added level of importance.
The move has been fuelled by the success of video game applications on smart phones, with analysts predicting that the total revenue generated from the applications on iOS and Android powered phones to reach the $1-billion mark by the end of the year.
Up until now, the primary source of video game downloads was Valve’s Steam platform, which holds a bit of a monopoly on the market. Valve not only distributed its own titles, but it also sold titles from other publishers as well.
However, EA seem serious about their own platform and have pulled a number of their titles off Steam and are planning to launch their upcoming first person shooter, Battlefield 3, as an Origin exclusive.
Yet EA acknowledged that retailers were still a major part of their plans and the sale of video games on the disc format are still the main source of revenue.
Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, acknowledged the fact when he stated, “With regards to our ability to look at this as a full service... we still see retail as a very strong partner here. There are still millions of people who go through the doors of
the GameStops of this world every single day and they're the core consumer we're looking at.”
He also pointed out that Origin was still an experiment to test the waters and that the next year could be decisive, “But we're going to learn a lot in the next 12 months. This is about understanding what the consumer likes, understanding the price points
so we can do some price elasticity testing on this and making sure what we're delivering is what the consumer wants... we'll see how we evolve this program in the coming years.”
It is good news for gamers as it will create competition among the distributors, and competition leads to efficiency.
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