Electronic Arts (EA) and Ubisoft today announced that a few of their published titles will grace each others’ online storefront.
Ubisoft titles, such as Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3, can now be purchased through EA’s Origin store, with more titles such as Splinter Cell Conviction on the way. Likewise, EA games such as Dead Space 3, FIFA Soccer 13, The Sims 3, and Mass Effect 3 will soon be found in Ubisoft’s Uplay store.
“Making our biggest franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry available on Origin is a great way of exposing even more PC gamers to these great titles and giving them another choice in where and how they buy their games,” said Chris Early, VP of Digital Publishing at Ubisoft. “Also, by adding excellent titles from EA to the Uplay shop, we’re taking another important step in making Uplay the most rewarding set of services available to our customers.”
This is undoubtedly a nice get for both EA and Ubisoft, which will see the quality and number of titles in their stores rise as a result of the deal. Both companies publish multiple AAA games each year that are generally well-reviewed.
It does raise the question, though, or what exactly these publishers hope Origin and Uplay will become. Since PC DRM for each publisher’s game is tied to their store, gamers will have to have Uplay to play a copy of Far Cry 3 downloaded from the Origin store, or would have to have Origin to play a copy of Dead Space 3 purchased from Uplay. Why bother purchasing either publisher’s titles from the other’s store?
It’s understandable that EA and Ubisoft want to emulate the success of Steam, but that platform has slowly built success using sales and a burgeoning indie game selection – all on the back of trust Valve has earned through the years. EA does not have the same customer-focused track record, and Ubisoft only just ended its failed experiment with always-on DRM.