EA calls Origin’s first year ‘a huge success’

David DeMartini, senior VP of global e-commerce at EA, has declared its Origin service "a huge success."

Since its start in June 2011, Origin has rallied 12 million users and 50 different publishing partners — from Warner Bros and Capcom to Paradox and Autumn Games — despite its rivalry with Valve's Steam platform.

However, DeMartini wasn't shy about what went into that success: "continuous improvement," he told GameSpot.

"That said, the Origin feature-set last year was very foundational," he explained. "When you start one of these services, you can't leap to the glitzy features. You have to get the meat and potatoes down first."

Now that the foundation is in place, DeMartini said the company is "excited because we're going to start to draft some of those skill position players that are going to put a lot more sticky features on the Origin application." He wants people to see Origin as a genuine service, not a carbon-copy digital retailer.

They've come a long way, he said, mentioning features like cloud saves, friends lists, in-game chats, and more: "And you look at it at a meta layer, and you look at where we started versus where we are right now, it's very hard to look at that and say, 'Wow, they're not making any progress.'

"After immediately saying that, I would also say, we're very much engaging with the community, and we're trying to hear from them what are those sticky features that they want us to be developing that would allow us to be differentiated from any other download service," DeMartini said. "We don't have an intention of being any other service. We have an intention of being the best Origin that we can be."

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