Origin signs several large non-EA publishers

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011…or-publishers/

THQ, Capcom and Warner Brothers will be bringing their games to Origin now. Some of these games (like Dawn of War II and Space Marine) up to this point were Steamworks only so I'd imagine they will have to create new versions for Origin.

Still no sign of EA bringing any indie games to Origin.

This looks like an upcoming battle between

- Steam
- "Origin"
- GOG (only to some degree, since their niche is very much retro oriented)
- Gamersgate
- Windows Live
- Onlive, perhaps

and others like that.

See it as a huge cake.

So far, only a few took pieces from that cake; in the very begining I think it was even Steam alone.
Now, others want also pieces from the same cake.
But the cake is only so big.
There'll be more and stronger competition.

Some of these games, like Batman, use multiple services. For the Batman games you have Steam (if you buy it there) Games For Windows Live and Securom. I imagine for Origin it will be Origin, Games For Windows Live and Securom.

Increasingly, I think we will also see games like this requiring two or three DRM checks due to multiple layers put on by different affiliations and the publishers being obnoxious and not removing securom and tages even when selling through portals with their own DRM.

Interesting development.

For games with multiplayer components, however, it seems their PC MP communities will be split in half unless they use Steamworks or Origin. I don't foresee the Steam and Origin clients playing nice to enable cross-platform multiplayer.

/rant

I hope they burn. They're too stupid to make it possible for me to view their website in English. Just because I'm in freaking Asia doesn't mean you have to shove Chinese down my throat without any way of changing it. GoG, Steam, Impluse, Gamersgate and hell even D2D knows this and let's me choose which language I want, but this simple little thing is beyond EA's thinking.

http://store.origin.com/store/eatw/h…00/ccRef.en_US

You see that there! I have no way to change "eatw" and "eatw" is only in Chinese. I can't go to any Origin site other than eatw because it always plops me back onto that page and there is no changing the language anywhere on that page. I've even emailed them asking for a way to change it and they told me that there is nothing they or I can do.

Screw them! If in the future they force that origin down my throat in order to buy a game from them, then forget it. I'll go without.

/end rant

Seriously though, who ever thought up this website needs to be fired. Every company out there makes it possible to shop in English. Gamersgate and Impulse even give me the price in TW dollars, but the rest is in English.

Interesting. In my case, the language (of the web site) automatically switches to Germany. Maybe they're using geotagging ? Or cookies ? Or both ?

Geotagging would at least explain what you've experienced.

I have the same problem and ranted about it on the forum.