EA forcing Origin client on PC gamers that purchase retail copies of Battlefield

[daboggeyman]

 Confirmed by a DICE community manager, all physical copies of Battlefield 3 for the PC will require consumers to install the Origin client to play the game. Consumers that purchase Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 versions of the game will only need an EA account to play the first-person shooter. This extra step is required for all digital downloads of the game as well, regardless of where the consumer purchases it. EA is already attempting to push the Origin service to the PC community with early beta access to Battlefield 3 as well as other pre-order benefits. This announcement follows the recent confirmation that the anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG from Bioware will be ..............................http://news.yahoo.com/ea-forcing-origin-client-pc-gamers-purchase-retail-035607110.html

[Phuncz]

I actually don't mind, I already pre-ordered Battlefield 3 on Origin actually. Why I don't mind is because Valve did exactly the same thing with Steam and I've never had to complain about that. EA isn't the greedy corporation it used to be (or not as much), that "honor" goes to Activision now.

Also, it would be good Steam finally got some real competition so they can stop demanding higher prices than retail games.

[daboggeyman]

I was reading some where awhile ago that EA pulled BF 3 from steam dew to some kind of a problem , I'll need to go back and find out what that was all about

[Phuncz]

The problem is that EA wants to give updates and DLC directly to the customers through Battlefield 3, not through Steam. And that is in violation of Steam's agreement.

[daboggeyman]

You are correct , EA wants to make all those updates via Origin but if I'm understanding some of the readings I have seen Origin may become a competitor with Steam in time.

[daboggeyman]

The problem is that EA wants to give updates and DLC directly to the customers through Battlefield 3, not through Steam. And that is in violation of Steam's agreement.

 Did you notice anywhere that BF-3 was not going to support DX-9 Phuncz ? So that will means those still using Win XP will need to upgrade their OS.

[Phuncz]

I sure hope so, Windows XP is over 10 years old. I'd recommend every decent PC gamer out there to upgrade to Windows 7 anyways, because it's a lot more stable for games in my experience and it can handle the new hardware. 4GB or more RAM for instance, along with better multi-core support.

Also, the last generation of videocards to come out that doesn't support DX10 were the Geforce 7000-series and Radeon X1000 series, which wouldn't be fast enough anyway to run the game properly. I bought a Radeon HD 6870 for about $ 200 and it's a pretty fast card that will likely run most games for a couple of years in the high or highest settings.

DirectX 10 and especially DirectX 11 also produce a lot better images without the need of the fastest videocard (just a supported one). Example:

Crysis 2 DX9 vs DX11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9-dwdourgE&hd=1

[daboggeyman]

My system is good to go , after I get back to work I'll need to upgrade from Vista 32 bit to Win 7 64 bit and do an upgrade to my video card .  I still have buddies that upgraded everything but their OS ans some of them are still running XP . Although I still have XP on one of two  back up drives in my computer