Electronic Arts' Frank Gibeau On Origin's TOR Exclusive

As we learned back when Electronic Arts’ new digital download service Origin was announced, it would be the exclusive outlet for players who prefer to purchase Star Wars: The Old Republic digitally.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, EA’s Frank Gibeau talked a bit about the reasoning behind this decision:

Q: Star Wars: The Old Republic is a digital exclusive to Origin – should we expect more PC digital titles to be exclusive to Origin?

Frank Gibeau: It depends on the title and what we’re trying to do. In the case of Star Wars we’re trying to build an audience for Origin. And it’s also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing. For a lot of reasons it made sense for an MMO, which is a highly complex deployment. I think long-term you’ll see we believe in reach so we will have other digital retailers for out products because we want to reach as many audiences as possible. But at the same time if we can use exclusive content or other ideas to help grow our audience then we’re going to do that because we’re growing a platform.

Yes, this means that if you’re a Steam groupie or a Direct2Drive junkie, you’re out of luck.

It’s important to note that this exclusivity only reflects the digital purchase, and you’ll still be able to buy a boxed, retail copy of the game from your favorite retailer (both online and off.)