Steam is so convenient, so useful and regularly cheap enough that many won’t even bother looking elsewhere for a digitally distributed PC game. But the world’s biggest publishers don’t like Valve’s near-monopoly of the market and they launched their own services.
Two such services – EA’s Origin and Ubisoft’s uPlay – are now combining their resources to take on Steam’s dominant position. Origin has hosted content from other publishers before but for uPlay, this deal marks the first time another publisher’s content will appear. It’s not just EA games coming to uPlay, either, they’re also going to allow content from Warner Bros., Bohemia Interactive and TellTale. For their part, EA will be adding Ubisoft titles to Origin for the first time.
Now, it’s mostly a matter of personal taste but I don’t like uPlay very much and Origin is quite frustrating in many ways. Certainly nothing to rival Steam in the usability stakes but services like these are all about content and this kind of partnership, if Valve loses the content involved, is a very powerful one.
Source: PCR-Online, thanks @KillaScorp
The Lone Steven
What EA and Ubisoft fail to realise that Steam managed to become the giant that it is today by doing sales on a weeklyish basis and respect’s it’s customers. EA is not held in the same regard as Valve due to their recent money grabbing habbits.
Plus, Steam has games from over a decade ago for sale for a reasonable price and seems to be userfriendly. Whereas, Uplay doesn’t seem to be good and Origin is said to be crap.
deadwelsh
Steam just works, and with no fuss, if EA want to try to compete then fine, but I for one am not interested in overpriced game franchises dating back to early 2000s anymore, so if you only sell on your own store just expect fewer sales which will lead to higher entry costs got the people that do purchase.
As far as Ubi are concerned, I use my console for most gaming and having to tell you at least twice I do not want to log in to your crap system if I am not forced in order to play your game then just means you have alienated me further From your catalogue.
Why do we even need these in the first place??? Steam included…
All of these e stores are balls, let the retailers sell the Roms on their own with zero bloat ware at their own price point, like how it used to be, when gaming was fun!