gamesindustry.biz published an interesting interview last week with the Head of EA's Origin, David DeMartini. The interview discusses what will be coming up over the next year for Origin, comparisons to Steam, and his thoughts on the Steam discount sales model.

There are two main excerpts from the interview which I found particularly interesting, and i'll link to the rest of the interview below.

Firstly, Origin is looking to expand to multiple platforms;

"...we're playing on PS3, we're on Xbox, we're on PC, we're on social, we're on mobile, and we want to be the centerpiece, the hub, where all those achievements on all of those platforms come together"
Personally, I find this the most interesting, but it is entirely expected. To compete with Steam on both a user and game producer level, this is obviously required. The follow-on from this is that until Origin get ahead of Steam in terms of distribution and user-base, they are always going to have to match whatever they do.

DeMartini does not approve of the Steam deep discount model.
"... just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that..."
Again, this is not all that suprising. it is unlikely that he was going to come out in favor of the Steam discount model. Obviously it works for Steam, but it seems that EA believes its system is a little more 'legitimate' (for lack of a better term), although ironically have a 50% sale on at the time of writing

NB: Little bit of a long post today, but it was an interview i found thoroughly interesting. Tomorrow's post will be a summary of the E3 event over the weekend (Hurrah Simcity)
Full Interview