Paul

@Shadowbender
If they give you everything at once, how can they sell you expansion packs? :P

Latency FTW.

I don't get why people dislike competition? Why would we want one single all powerful service? Do you realise the dangers of that people?

Sure, the Origin software is shockingly poor right now, but it'll come along and hopefully it won't be EA only content before too long, otherwise it just becomes part of EA's walled-garden rather than a platform that can offer you pricing choice.

EA's software won't go onto Steam anymore and Valve's will never appear on Origin, but let's hope the exclusives don't extend further than that.

@Reallife
Well that depends really. Activision will get into this soon, but I doubt all publishers will.
Why set your own stupidly expensive system up when you can bolt into someone elses who has 9 years of development and experience unless you're a mega publisher?
All you're doing is passing a percentage of the sale to them as the digital publisher (a smaller percentage than give up on a boxed sale), and thats it.
All your backend needs are handled at Valve's end.

@Viiral
A game on Steam doesn't necessarily mean they are using Steamworks though. Steamworks gives companies DRM, VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat), Microtransaction handling, Cloud saves, Steam achievements and matchmaking, trickle updating for pre-orders, updating only items and files that have changed when releasing a new update, things like that. Companies can choose what parts they want to use, or none of it and can go with a different solution for each should they like.

@packy17
They're going to require Origin the platform installed on your PC so they can deliver updates to you, not just logging in via the in-game interface.

There's no point in complaining. I would LIKE it to be on Steam, I really would as that is my service of choice, but I'm also happy to see Steam have some competition.

I can't see EA's pricing move around and change like Steam's does. I can pick any game up on Steam for generally less than the boxed product, I can't see EA doing that.

@DokiDokiBawanga
This isn't a racing game, its a team management game. You're the boss of an F1 team, not the driver.
Its the spirtual (not direct) successor to the Microprose F1 Manager games in the mid 90s.

@RudyHuxtable Jumpgate is NetDevil/Gazillion. Codemasters only published it, they didn't develop it. I'm assuming Jumpgate Evolution is on the backburner now as Gazillion has the Marvel license.
F1 Online is being developed at Codemasters Birmingham, who also develop the F1 racing games and they gathered a ton of critical acclaim and good sales off the back of the license. Codemasters Birmingham was set up to handle the F1 license, so work on this has nothing to do with Jumpgate at all.

So if you pay $10.00 a month for a subscription, are you happy for it to increase to $14.30 across the board, whether you are using an iOS device or not, to account for the 30% cut? Businesses aren't and cannot compete with a 30% margin cut out, so will have to increase their prices to account for it. Some business like Kindle, NetFlix, Spotify, Rhapsody etc. operate on tight but profitable margins at around that figure.

So your prices will increase, and because they can't charge more in-app than out of the app, you have a form of price fixing.

The next obvious step is for Apple to launch their own rivals to these music and video streaming sites, and undercut the competition and yet still take 30% of any money their competitors make via iOS. Its anti-competition, and it will get struck down legally, I'm sure.