Steam had the luxury of being the first one to do it, and do it unopposed for years. They got a lot wrong, but they could afford to, and they're doing great now.

Origin is being compared to Steam because it IS compared to Steam. It doesn't have the luxury Steam had of being unopposed, but it DOES have the luxury of just copying the good parts of Steam.

Which it's not doing.

This isn't, I don't know, an MMO, where I should be graceful and patient and have faith it will get better. And it's not a small indie company that I want to support.

Origin is a way to buy games, and it's run by EA. The only reason for me to support Origin is if I gain something from it.


As for the free games thing, EA could TOTALLY do something like that. True, there could be licensing issues, but money always clears those up. And the thing about digital distribution is that it costs a fraction of the cost of physical distribution.

It'd be a pretty classic business technique if EA took a small loss giving every new Origin user a free copy of Mass Effect (or whatever, some popular-but-old game). The point is to get the consumer hooked. God knows that's what Valve does, albeit in a different way (freaking Steam sales!!!)

Amazon does it too- I think I read that they take a loss on every Kindle Fire they sell. Didn't Sony do it with the PS3? I forget.

Anyway. Right now, the only reason to use Origin is because a game you want to play is forcing you to install it. That is not a viable way to build a customer base.



(Another plus to Valve's tactics of giving out games and the like- builds an intensely loyal customer base. Valve certainly isn't perfect, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who actively hate Valve, their games, their business practices, and the rest.)