Electronic Arts Unveils Origin, Competes with Steam

Electronic Arts has announced its plans to launch its very own competitor to Steam, called Origin.

Borrowing the name from the studio absorbed and later shut down by Electronic Arts a decade ago, the new service is expected to function very much like Steam, offering a store and a gaming platform on the PC to allow users to "purchase, download, and keep track of" their games.

The service will even include cross-platform notifications to allow its users to broadcast messages and achieve goals (or earn achievements) to online friends on a variety of devices.

EA mentioned a hypothetical example of how cross-platform integration would work on the service with a game like Battlefield 3: players could rack up experience points on a mobile version of the game that could, hypothetically, count towards unlocks on the PC version.

Electronic Arts has said that exclusive downloads for the company’s upcoming Star Wars themed MMORPG, The Old Republic, will be exclusive to the Origin service. Additionally, the game itself will only be available on Origin.

The platform is set to go live with over 150 games from EA. Further details will be unveiled at E3.