5 Ways to Immediately Improve Origin

EA has had a really bad 2 years. Like, epically bad. It all seemed to start with the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. Then SimCity was its own worse enemy, and NBA Live 14 was nearly unplayable. Finally, their flagship title, Battlefield 4 shipped with a nearly uncountable number of bugs and crashes. I don’t recall any other time where a company has had to issue 3 different corporate apologies in a calendar year. Even their former CEO John Riccitiello stepped down while everything was hitting the fan. However, even with all that one thing they did was pretty cool. That thing is Origin.

I recently had my first experience with EA’s Origin and surprisingly it was pretty good. Last year, The Humble Bundle did an Origin themed charity bundle that came with a fistfull of really good EA games. Usually, the Humble Bundles are given as Steam codes or sometimes direct downloads. In this case most of them were both Steam and Origin codes, but a few games that were not available through Steam had to be redeemed in Origin.  The two that I really wanted to play, Dead Space 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter were only on Origin.

My desire to play these games greatly outweighed my trepidation for a new platform so I bit the bullet and bought the bundle. I finally got around to playing Dead Space 3 and I must say that EA has built an appealing little system to house their PC games and with a few tweaks it could be great.

The User Interface is sleek, and easy. This is partially due to Origin not being too feature heavy yet, but its very easy to get where you want to go in the Application. Steam is easy to use but something about the interface makes it feel like its setup for tech savvy users.

It could be anything from the heavy use of black in the color scheme to the navigation bars, Steam feels like it has a barrier to entry, when it really doesn’t. Origin, feels like the Target of PC games. You know exactly where to find everything and typically everyone is nice to you in the process. I would trust my dad to easily navigate Origin before trusting him with Steam.

So far Origin hasn’t been intrusive. There’s been no annoying ads and typically you see exactly what you want to see. What you click on is where you go. The achievement system works well and with it being on a 1000 point system, Origin lines up with the already established Xbox 360 achievements.

Surprisingly Origin soaks up recent EA game purchases from other retailers. I bought Bulletstorm through Amazon digital download a couple years ago. I stumbled on it in my purchase history and wondered what would happen if I threw the cd key into Origin. Would you look at that? It added Bulletstorm to my list of Origin games.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty though. What could make Origin a huge hit? What features can it add that Steam doesn’t have?

1. Cross Platform Play – Origin already offers games that play across iOS, Android and PC, on a small scale, but this is an area where EA’s need to run all of their servers could benefit everyone. With EA’s games being developed for the big three (PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4), all of them having a similar infrastructure and EA running the servers for all three. This is the first real opportunity for cross platform play. Even its just PS4 vs PC or XBONE vs. PC, it would be a step in the right direction.
2. More Back Catalog Games – EA has been a company for about 32 years, and they’ve been making games on nearly all platforms ever since. One of those platforms is PC. One area that GOG and Steam have the upper hand is that they have VERY old games. They are so old they can be sold at steeply discounted prices. EA owns enough old licenses and game code through the years, not offering their entire back catalog of PC games is all but losing them money.
3. Better feature descriptions and a community – I searched forever in the game page for Dead Space 3 and could not find listed compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller for PC. Then I figured they would have some sort of in application user forums to discuss said compatibility. What I found was nothing. Sure that’s a large infrastructure that would have to be built, but in the end it would be well worth it. The more time players spend in you store the more likely they are to drop some cash in it.
4. Total EA account Integration – Every online enabled EA game for the last decade or so was tied to an EA online account. Technically if you had one it has been turned into an Origin account, but your previous play history is nowhere to be found. Its logical to think that EA knows what Xbox Live and PSN accounts your EA games are tied to. What if Origin pulled in your activity from other platforms like play history and trophy/achievement information? The existing relationships EA has with both Microsoft and Sony should make the project pretty easy.
5. Super Sales/Flash Sales – Steam has huge seasonal sales and Flash Sales daily. Despite the typical discount you see on older games, Origin sales aren’t nearly as flashy. I spend more time in Steam just because I have 60+ games in my library and why do I have these games? Sales! Step it up, EA.

My first thought on Origin was, “Man, do we really need another platform for games?” I know the answer now is yes. Steam is great but for the industry to remain stable and fair they need competition. Origin has a LONG way to go to catch up, but its a great start and unlike everything else EA has touched recently its not broken…yet.