Electronic Arts rebranded and relaunched the EA Store in June as Origin. It's a digital platform that sells EA's games and provides other features like a friends list and in-game overlay. With Steam already comfortably filling this role, many PC gamers were upset to even see EA try to clog the market with a competitor, though that hasn't stopped four million users from installing the Origin client since June.
EA's CFO, Eric Brown, mentioned the figure during a UBS conference in London today, Gamasutra reports. EA expects that figure to "climb substantially" as we near the holiday season. That's all but guaranteed, what with Origin being tied in with Battlefield 3 and it being the only place to purchase a digital copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Another thing that may help to drive installations is the addition of third-party content to Origin. The store is currently home to nothing but EA games -- Battlefield 3, The Sims 3, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 comprise the front page whereas Skyrim, Red Orchestra 2, and Serious Sam 3 are the headliners on Steam at the moment. Steam was originally launched to host only Valve's content like Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike; it has since expanded to largely consist of third-party games and that's a critical component of its success.
EA had previously alluded to bringing third-party games to Origin, though Brown went so far as to say we're not far from that being a reality.
"Initially, Origin is set up to deliver EA games, but very soon, we'll be delivering third-party content to Origin," he stated.
He went on to explain that it'll attract those third-parties by "leverag[ing] our backend infrastructure -- the 130 million-plus registered users that we have, the multitude of digital payment methods, et cetera."
Still, third-party games alone won't convince the millions of Steam users to convert unless there's some compelling reason to do so. After all, why leave behind Steam to get nothing extra from a service that your friends are less likely to be using? Figuring out how to lure in those people will ultimately be the key to making it big, but getting other companies' games on the platform is definitely a step in the right direction.
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