Should TOR stay Origins Exclusive?

Origin exclusivity is really short sighted. Sure, cross platform distribution allows, for example, Steam to dig into EA profits. But at the same time, it opens up SWTOR to a larger market. And never forget: SWTOR is a subscription based game. That's where the majority of profits should come from, subscriptions not the initial sale. This is why I feel it's a rather short sighted approach to not open the game to Steam.

You actually believe people have not purchased SWTOR because it's not available on Steam?? It's the internet, you can't get a larger audience.

Believe it or not if you limit your digital distribution you limiting your overall sales. Steam has 4.6 clients on as of this post. If you took just 15% of their loyal customers (brand loyalty is fact, look at apple, fans line up for their products) that equals 120 million dollars a year. Steam provides constant sales on their catalog, they promote future games that are on their catalog, their interface is easy to use and you can delete and download games years later at no cost and as a by product they have the 4.6 million live streaming customers as a result

This post isn't to suggest origins is good or bad, its to suggest opening up there digital distribution, and what side effects that would have on this game

Your argument in your opinion and not fact

Valves Steam sells EA products such as
Sims 3 (and all associated expansions)
Mass Effect 1 & 2
Dragon Age Origins
+50 other games

EA distributes Valves games on Platform systems such as x-box and ps3
Portal 2

The only reason to make it exclusive is to draw attention to Origins, but at a certain time this strategy saturates and peaks. Maybe its time to open up the market

Ok, when that happens a couple years from now, it will be time.

Hm good point. It doesn't make sense that way.

Populations are not on the increase, it doesn't take a analyst to tell you that sales probably have peaked as well, and with games like TERA and GW2 on the horizon who probably will use origins and steam as well wouldn't it make sense to comepete in those markets with them?

You're assuming that it is completely black and white. Just because people play GW2, doesn't mean they don't play any other game. Same goes for players on SWTOR. That's like the old argument between which consoles are the best, but it is known that people do own 2 of the 3.

I don't think they will lose anything large enough to matter when those games come out. People will flock to them to try them out, but not leave this game completely. It will be the same story too. The most vocal group will just complain about how X option is a copy from N game. Then they will get bored and complain about what the game lacks.

Well TOR is not Origin (no plural s btw) exclusive. I bought a box on Amazon.

And as for Origin exclusive titles - good luck Bioware, I have ME1 and 2 on Steam, guess why I haven't even bothered about ME3, because Origin is just a bad version of something I already have (Steam), why should I have to use two programs and services that are meant to do the same? I'd rather stick with the better one. And why should I split my game collection that arbitrarily across two services?

The innate problem of Origin is EA; it is both trying to get its own games sold and trying to get its generic gaming platform popular. Valve on the other hand, thought haveing released a few (rather good, btw) titles itself, concentrates on Steam being a service, and has no problem with providing titles competing with their own games on their platform.

Don't misunderstand me, I know Steam is far from perfect. But I see no reason to use a similar, yet worse system if I already have one. And even if Origin were as good as Steam or even a bit better, I already have a collection of games and DLC on Steam. Origin would have to be vastly superior to become attractive for me.

Kudos. I absolutely agree with this mindset. My personal bias against Origins asides, I really feel it will benefit SWTOR by expanding digital distribution beyond Origins. The more people that are given the option to purchase over their chosen platform, the more subscriptions we can hope to see. And the more subscription we get, in theory, SWTOR gets more money to develop new content, players get more people to play the game with, and EA gets a long term profit so long as they keep SWTOR up to par.

That's why I feel, in my earlier post, that Origins digital exclusivity is short sighted.