EA wants some opinions on Origin

Valve’s Gabe Newell has given his feedback on digital platform Origin. Now EA wants to know what you think.

In a blog entry called “Continuing the Origin conversation”, EA called on users to comment on their favourite Origin feature, and comment on a feature they’d like to see added or improved upon.

“Since its launch in June 2011, Origin has undergone a quiet evolution, smoothing corners, strengthening foundations, and adding – piece by piece – the elements needed to make it a truly enjoyable gaming platform,” EA said. “However, in focusing so intently on what’s to come, we haven’t always succeeded in communicating what’s already available. That’s where our users bring invaluable insight to the Origin conversation.”

Meanwhile, EA will hold a live Origin Q&A on 8th May at 10am Pacific time (6pm UK time). More information on this will be announced soon.

Last month Newell said Origin still had a long way to go before it could boast that it properly satisfies its customers.

“They have a lot of work to do to get to where they need to be and where I as a customer would want them to be,” he said on a podcast. He was then asked if he thought Origin was currently doing anything particularly well. “Err… Err…” he replied, followed by an uncomfortable pause.

“I don’t want to dodge the question – I don’t think they’re doing anything super-well yet. They have a bunch of smart people working on it but I think they’re still playing catch up to a lot of people who have been working in the space for a while. I think they’re recognising what the challenges are with building and scaling out this kind of system.

“That’s not to say they won’t build stuff in the future that is useful to software developers or to gamers but they haven’t done that yet.”

In February EA executive Peter Moore asked gamers to give Origin 18 months to two years before comparing it to Steam.

“We need to continue to add social layers so there is value to the consumer, so it doesn’t feel like, in their words, ‘something that is mandatory that I don’t want’,” Moore said.

“And it got off to a rocky start for all the wrong reasons which were mostly inaccurate: accusations of spyware. The EULA…

“We were clearly focused on by some folks who said, ‘We don’t like this. How can we start picking things apart?'”

Origin was the EA Store prior to being relaunched as Origin last summer, and before that it was EA Link and EA Downloader. But its relaunch as Origin was a clear, aggressive move to one day compete with Steam.

Origin now has some 10 million users, and more than one million are active every day. Steam’s witnessed five million people online at once, and has 35 million active users.

Source: EA Blog