Origin; digital only from April 4th

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

Origin/EA will be scrapping all physical copies of games on April 4th meaning the store will be digital only for all titles next week. 

 

This is a fucking joke. I bought Titanfall for £29.99 yet it's £44.99 on Origin and the online store doesn't have any physical costs such as packaging, production or distribution. Work that one out. It's also funny that they've done this before the UK tax rate is applied to digital downloads which will pretty much see full priced titles from EA hit the store at £50. 

 

Thank god EA don't have many good games worth buying on their books. It was bound to happen though but they really need to reduce their prices. 

[Diddums 4,346]

Good luck to 'em. I can live without those games and Steam is awesome.

 

Origin is an outdated piece of shite and until they update it and actually market it properly with special offers and free weekends, it's just going to sink.

[Sennex 1,903]

I have a few games that use the Steam->Ubistoft Launcher, and that works perfectly

 

If EA were to adopt that, then cool. If they drop Steam Support in favor of forcing Origin on top of dropping physical copies, then they suck.

 

Although, to be 100% honest here, I think all companies should start scaling back how many physical copies of anything they put out. (Excluding Consoles from this. I am purely talking PC titles.)

[deterioration 443]

Origin is an outdated piece of shite and until they update it and actually market it properly with special offers and free weekends, it's just going to sink.

I'm not a fan also. I really can't stand having to start BF3 in a web browser. It works as needed with Dead Space 3 even if I'd prefer using Steam instead.

 

Posted this in Shout box, not sure if you all caught it, they are starting to give games away. Old games that are almost free used but doing something to try and increase chatter. http://www.origin.com/en-us/store/on-the-house-ANW.html <- go grab Dead Space for free even if you already own it on PS3 and Steam like I do!

 

 

If they drop Steam Support in favor of forcing Origin on top of dropping physical copies, then they suck.

 

Although, to be 100% honest here, I think all companies should start scaling back how many physical copies of anything they put out. (Excluding Consoles from this. I am purely talking PC titles.)

EA has no quarrels with fucking customers to maximize profits. They'll love to cut out physical copy costs while keeping the same pricing. They'd only be following the business model of almost every food manufacturer forcing customers to pay the same for less. Similar to making you download manuals to reduce printing costs. I hope they say something wacky like because of rising gas prices they can't offer price discounts on digital downloads.

 

It might be a where you live thing but I thought they had already cut back PC game copies? Remembering the days of toy/game stores having almost every PC game along with console games. Now places have like 10-15 PC titles max and when new games come out they might get 2 copies for PC. (Thanks Best Buy) Maybe they aren't stocking as much because more people are console gaming but it's hard to find physical games here. On top of being hard to find stores very rarely keep on top of PC game price reductions. Obviously they can't compete with Steam but being somewhere in the area of current might help drive up game sales.

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

It might be a where you live thing but I thought they had already cut back PC game copies? Remembering the days of toy/game stores having almost every PC game along with console games. Now places have like 10-15 PC titles max and when new games come out they might get 2 copies for PC. (Thanks Best Buy) Maybe they aren't stocking as much because more people are console gaming but it's hard to find physical games here. On top of being hard to find stores very rarely keep on top of PC game price reductions. Obviously they can't compete with Steam but being somewhere in the area of current might help drive up game sales.

I think a lot of stores don't bring in PC games in the quantities due to the DRM restrictions and the risk of not selling the copies. Many publishers don't opt for producing them any more either. My local store 15 years ago used to have a library of cardboard boxes and many games used to sell like hotcakes the physical way but now with Steam; many gamers are just buying digitally because of the sales and the ease. Origin offers fuck all in special deals most of the time and their prices are extortionate. By cutting out the physical aspect; shops will ultimately not stock any PC titles in the near future even if they are still floating around I reckon. Origin should just be disbanded and everything should be transferred to Steam. It would save EA a lot of money in the long run and general sever stress. I know EA are paranoid about losing more money through piracy but their restrictions and general arrogance with Origin has done them no favours even with their abysmal reputation.

 

They even had to pre-load Titanfall 4 days early so people could download it for fear that everything would collapse on release day.

 

uPlay are shite also.  

[Sennex 1,903]

Uplay isn't bad for the few games I use it for. I most likely use it a shade differently than the rest of you though.