Picked up DAO. On the fence about Dead Space. Not really in the mood for another horror/survival FPS. Have Bioshock and Doom 3 yet to complete anyway. Don't really care for SimCity 3k although still plan on getting SimCity 4K down the road.

As for the speculation that EA will bring DA2&3 to GOG, my personal opinion is no. At least not in the forseeable future. They only put out the first game to attract those who want more to their site to be able to play the latter trilogies.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm really happy that DAO is being offered here.

Will be getting Dead Space for sure, I had bought the box back when it came out, but I lost the CD after several moves since then. Will be fun to play through again. I hope we can get Dead Space 2 at some point also.

I would get Dragon Age, but I already have it. I still load it up once in a while, great game.

If it was all about the money then EA would still be all-in on ssteam, because even with the ssteam cut they would have made (a lot of) more money than having those games orrigin-only (70% from ~80% marketshare is clearly more than 100% from ~5% marketshare).
So it's definitely not only about the money.

There'll be great if next week we get one or two EA games more. I'd like to see here Mass Effect (at least the first one).

The more likely candidates at this point are Crysis, Mirror's Edge and The Saboteur. I'm hoping for a Thursday release.

Mass Effect 1 will come too, the question is when.
As for Crysis, Mirrors Edge and Saboteur I really doubt it'll happen this month.

Holy shit, I can't believe this...DAO and dead space HERE!? In my cart right now, even though I have the original DAO on disk, at least this is DRM free with no online install/checks!

Thanks gog, now if we can get dead space 2...
Upvoted due to your kick-ass avatar! Frazetta's Cimmarian is the default for me!

Er, no actually. Origin has been highly successful for EA. Sure most would prefer Steam but will tolerate Origin to play EA's biggest franchises. Those who won't use Origin is insignificant compared to those who will tolerate it.

If Origin was not successful EA would already be back on Steam... but EA doesn't need Steam. Neither do a lot other big publishers which is why were seeing a shift away from Steam on the AAA side of the industry.

I was not saying that origin wasn't (highly) successful for EA.
I was saying that ea would have made more money with their games on ssteam when compared with their games on origin-only.
And they would have made even more money with their games on multiple platforms as opposed to origin-only.
It's basic common sense, the larger the marketshare the more money you make.
Hence why it is not only about the money for ea when deciding to tie their games on their platform only.
imo

Why not (seriously)? A bit of competition is surely good for the customer and most launchers you never really see or feel because you are anyway always on, have input your credentials earlier and the launchers silently launches the game when clicking on the game icon on the desktop and you're ready to play. So having Origin and/or Uplay and/or Galaxy installed as alternative to Steam should be in the interest of the customer and probably doesn't screw your system nowadays.

It makes sense for EA to have their own client. They cut out the middlemen (30% of the sales is huge) and their games are so popular, people will even buy their games from them directly instead from Steam without loss of market share. Simply, all customers who want to buy EA games probably also have heard of Origin, so being only on Origin is not a disadvantage.

Steam is big, but PC players still look outside of Steam too, at least for huge EA games.

If you are a smaller player like for example Paradox though, it's different. There you would be right. Paradox basically has to be on Steam and let Steam have a cut, otherwise they lose critical market access.

2K or Square Enix probably are thinking similar, they are sticking to Steam (and often Steam exclusives for that).

Still it should be better to also offer the games on their own webshop. So if Paradox would sell their games also on their own (preferably without DRM) I would buy them happily there instead of at Steam.

Even GOG has some exclusives.

EA did it right. They maximized their profit. They used their power as a publisher to make their eco system (Origin) as well known as Steam. That's why they don't have to be on Steam. All others...

The only other way to break the position of Steam would be if several other publishers (2K, Ubisoft, Square Enix, ...) would join their forces, create an alternative and put all their upcoming games exclusively there.

Otherwise it will be an uphill battle for small distributors like GOG to even convince publishers to come here, to get well known among the customers, to finance the investments resulting in better services.

How many people can GOG afford to work on Galaxy? Not very many judging by the speed of improvement. You can see the disadvantage of being small clearly.

And I'm saying that's not necessarily true. Larger market share means there is potential for more money, not that you will make more money. Those who are primary EA fans on Steam will buy from Origin and that is all profit straight to them. A 30% cut per sale adds up quite a bit so it's entirely possible they are making more money on origin even with a smaller market share and less direct sales.

Okay let me be more clear, GOG and Steam are good competition. The problem is EA isn't really competition, neither is UPlay. These are stores primary for the publishers that own them, there goal is not to directly compete with Steam or GOG, it to sell you their own games.

So to recap, 10+ launchers would be fine if these were owned by companies really competing by offering games from every publisher out there (like Steam and GOG) giving the customer choices. However locking games behind a particular client to increase profits just for you own games is bad for consumers all around. It's just one more thing we have to install and keep track of, which directly disconnects you from where you have already established yourself in a community, etc.

Sadly, Dead Space refuses to work on the stable release of WINE... There is an error message telling me that my card doesn't fit the minimum system requirements..I have a GTX 970 and a core i7 4790K..

But it works fine via Playonlinux... Im gonna try with lower hardware, like a GTX 750ti and a core i3 4160 and see what happen..

But direct marketing is competition to online retail. The idea is to cut out the middlemen which could lead to lower prices which would be good. If it really works out that way - nobody knows.

I understand your arguments but I do not share them. I have nothing against EA or Ubisoft having their own stores and do not joining Steam for example. One more launcher or less doesn't make much difference to me. It's a little bit about convenience but I don't feel strongly about it.

If you want lower prices then make the game available on a multitude of platforms as opposed to only one platform in which case you definitely want a monopol so higher prices.

I don't have a problem with that. My problem is not releasing those games on other platforms too. Because what they are doing is killing the competition by following their foolish monopolistic dream.
A wise consumer would see and understand that ... but the masses are inherently dumb.

It's a monopoly on that game, but there are thousands of other games out there made by other good devs and publishers some of which might be very similar to this game. EA has by no means a monopoly on video games. I think they feel the competition.

I agree that they could put their games also on other publishers. I would prefer that too but I might still buy directly at them because when for a small dev I argue that's better to buy at their own web site because of cutting out the middlemen I can hardly argue the other way around once the dev is big, can I?