Less than 25 percent of the user-base but only 10percent of revenue (search "steam_revenue_nearly_hits_1_billion" ) I wonder how many of these stats are due to the BF3 beta (the only reason I installed it)

Craig your an idiot,in less than 12 mouths generated a 100 million from 0 to 100,000,000.00 in less than 12 mouths is massive.

How big was steams first year as a distributor of games google that.

Agreed Origin has a long way to go,but it will get better i think if you look at the functionality of Steam at conception again not bad for the first 12 months.

I'd actually agree more with Craig, Pud. Whilst yes that is a lot of revenue, it's still a fair point that the customers it does have are spending less money.

It's unfair aswell to say that it's grown faster as times are different now. When Steam first appeared internet speeds and caps were lower, digital distribution wasn't anywhere near as mainstream, and it was Steam that really drove that forward.

It's a little naive to compare their first 12 months directly. And I do think it's a fair point about one of their flagship titles (EA and Origin), BF3. I know countless people (myself included) that only have Origin around because of that one game forced the installation.

Settle down :D

Yes, that is a lot of money, my post was merely to provide more information into the figures. Numbers are meaningless without context.

Comparing Steam's year one sales is pointless as the digital market was a fraction its size.
For what it's worth, "Origin" used to be called the "EA Downloader" back in 2005.

also: *you're* and *months* :)

I wonder how much of this $100m is also counting the revenue made from the retail sales, as the retail versions also use Origin. This would skew the figures quite a bit if this has been included.

Steam introduced the whole concept of an application that facilitates the delivery of digital-download gaming content. Origin is riding on peoples confidence that this type of system works because they look at Steam and think, it works and its safe. (And in "safe", I mean, you can have confidence you won't wake up one morning having found all your games don't work). Steam has dispelled almost all the fears its approach raised in the beginning, so its obvious that Origin would grow it userbase much more quickly than Steam did from day one. And anyway, if EA hadn't taken its products away from steam, half of that revenue would probably have gone to steam anyway.

Anyway, at some point, things like Steam, Origin and Facebook will start to face anti-competition issues and we may find we are given the legal right to transfer our software (licenses) or identities from one platform to another depending on how happy or interesting we find one service or another. This would open up all these platforms to be more competitive and open.

Origin can suck my nuts. I have it installed for BF3 but wont be buying anything else that uses this POS.

I'm in the same boat as barry, except I know Mass Effect 3 will only be on origin.
If I want to continue buying good PC games I'll have to buy the EA published ones on origin and live with it, but given a choice, I'll always choose Steam.
Which brings up a point on competition...

Steam and origin are crapware anyway, the only reason these services rode to power is because they were both trojan horsed in on games everyone wants. Steam was forced into half-life and counterstrike lets not forget.

These companies really need to be sued for infringing the customers right to own their software and do what they please with it.