Wonder if this might have an effect on Valve/EA's publishing agreement going forward.

Tough row to hoe....gotta love the farming metaphors lol.  I wish I had a better rig; as it stands my specs are nowhere close to being able to run TOR

Wow, talk about burning bridges EA. You launched a download service that is not going to touch the popularity of Steam. You are trying to compete with a giant. And instead of making friends with the Giant, you are throwing it to the side in order to....what, exactly? Make more money?

And when your service eventually fails, do you think Steam is going to take you back? Steam has a massive amount of users, it is absolutely absurd to ignore that. This would be like refusing to release any retail games to EB Games or any other store, and instead forcing people to drive to your headquarters to buy your games.

I for one am never giving my credit card info to EA after what happened to me the last time, so I guess that means no Star Wars MMO's for me. Just as well, everything I read about it is pretty terrible.

Huh, another hurdle for it to be a success.

Honestly this feels like a bad move to me. This is a game that EA seriously needs to break-even with and they are making it exclusive. Of course I understand that they want to promote their new service, but all this will do is cause some people to not buy this really expensive game which needs to succeed in both sales and community population to be successful.

It'd better not be Origin only with social networking. Or EA's gonna burn. They've spent how much on this MMO? The same amount they're spending on marketing for BF3? *snicker* Marketing idiocy with Battlefield aside, use as many stores as you can. They can attract a more casual crowd if they distribute it through all available channels. Don't be so greedy you refuse to sell it through steam. Sacrifice a little of your greed so you can make more money, thus fulfilling your greedy little needs.

I will never be able to play this game anyway like Evil Deej says my laptop won't be able to run this, but this game looks awesome :)

If it works like the last couple EADM versions, you CAN run your games without launching them with the client.

As far as the exclusivity, they picked a safe game to try that with, because it's going to be huge no matter what. It isn't like all of their games are going to be digitally exclusive (and I'd say TOR won't be forever), but with the attention that game is going to garner, it seems like they are trying to use it to drive traffic to the new service.

I don't get all the puffing and blowing about Origin exclusivity for the digital version. If you don't want to order directly from EA for some reason, or have trepidation about the rebranded store, you can always buy a physical disc at the store (you know, like in the old days?).

Dumb idea to not have this game on Steam. I guarantee it will hurt sales. Steam is incredible.

This isn't actually true: www.swtor.com/.../showthread.php

Stephen Reid, the community manager for The Old Republic says,

"However, even though you'll only be able to buy and download The Old Republic digitally via Origin, you will still be able to buy a retail, boxed copy of the game from your favorite retailer (and that includes online retailers who’ll ship the box to you). BioWare and EA know the value many gamers place on a cool boxed product... and we’re producing a cool boxed product. (Or maybe I should say 'boxed products'. )"

The only "exclusive" part of The Old Republic on Origin is that it will be the only digital distributor to sell the product, so yes, no steam, but still boxed games.

Oooo boy ...... when I've seen the picture, I was like ... GRAY FOX!!!!! ..... another MGS news, cool!!! ..... ooo no ... it's something else

I think some of you are forgetting the most important part a starwars fan is going to want this game not a steam fan. Also it's good that more companies are trying their way into the digital arena. Bring the best out of them when they want your attention badly.

This will be interesting.

I often forget that EA makes games.. seems like they just make money. MUST BE NICE

This is stupid

Cool way to go EA ,can't wait.

Why are so many people commenting on how their system won't be able to run TOR so this doesn't matter anyways? The system requirements haven't even been released yet.

If you going off of the speculative requirements that are based off of the TOR demo being run last year at a convention, those specs are outrageous! They were just demo specs and computers that are running demos at events are always way over powered to make sure they run with no problems.

Pretty much anybody should be able to run TOR. If you can run WoW, Aeion or Champions Online I'm sure you'll be able to run TOR at a decent playable level.

As much as I'm waiting for TOR, no Steam - no deal. And with all due respect, BioWare should have given online distribution to Steam themselves, and not even give EA the option.

I use Steam a lot. I buy all of my new PC games through it, because the service is simply unmatched. I tried the EADM that EA offered before, and after they lost my copy of Mass Effect (which I was able to reacquire on Steam for the fantastic price of $5 during one of their sales) I vowed to never use any of their online services ever again.

If ToR requires this Origin program, I will never touch it.

Makes sense, but still a bad move. They should be putting this through Steam without thinking twice.