The Old Republic Does Well For Origin
EA’s MMO monster Star Wars: The Old Republic has been performing quite well according to Eurogamer with over two million copies sold and 1.7 million active subscribers. Most striking though is that 40% of sales were directly through EA’s download service Origin.
Mighty impressive figures I must say, further bolstered by Origin generating over $100 million in revenue since the service went live in June 2011. Eurogamer also report that there are over 9.3 million users on the service, but as some accounts were transferred over from the old EA Downloader service, it shouldn’t be taken that all those users have signed up since Origin went live.
It might not match the figures we are seeing from Steam right now, but with 21 publishers now on the service, ranging from Warner Bros to Capcom and Alan Wake coming on Origin too, Valve might have to start looking over their shoulder at what EA are doing with Origin.
Anyone out there using Origin, thoughts on it compared to Steam?
One thought on “The Old Republic Does Well For Origin”
I’m one of the 40% who used Origin to pay for SWTOR, it made sense to me to do so as Origin was already on my machine. I’m also one of those folks who ended up with Origin as a result of using EA’s older services.
Origin is an OK service to use, which is to say that the things I use Steam for (Store and Library), are adequately represented on Origin. It’s not difficult to find and buy a new game on Origin, and I’ve had no trouble bringing EA games across from Steam.
I could see Origin becoming an equal of Steam, if the catalogue of games and the pricing was closer to Steam, but it doesn’t have any major features that really distinguish it. It needs more than ‘you don’t need it open at all times whilst playing’ to stand a long-term chance against Valve’s machinations.