Chief operating officer believes early cynicism towards platform has passed
EA chief operating officer Peter Moore is confident that the publisher will be successful with Origin, their new online distribution service.
As a competitor to Valve’s Steam, consumers have been skeptical of the new outfit, but Moore remains optimistic. “If you go back and dust off the transcripts of when Steam first came out, it had the same reaction,” he pointed out in an interview with Kotaku during an EA Showcase in New York City. “People didn’t like it. You were obligated.”
Moore added, “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.’ 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?’”
Right now, Steam offers good value and is seen as more than just something mandatory. Origin needs to step up and become a similar product, and Moore is aware of this.
“It’s one of those things where I would ask, ‘Give us 18 months to two years.’ And if we sit here two years from now, start looking at it then,” he said. “I think the ability to have your own direct platform with the consumer is going to be very important in the digital world going forward.”