THE BUZZ: At a conference today in London, EA CFO Eric Brown had two big pieces of news concerning his company’s recently-launched digital download service, Origin.

The first is a hint at the popularity of the service. At this point, the Origin client has been installed about 4 million times. Come the holiday season, “we except that number to climb substantially,” Brown noted.

Bigger news, however, is that while the origin of Origin was to create a platform for delivering EA’s own titles, the service will expand “very soon” to also feature games from third-party publishers. This move had been hinted at back in July, but as of today’s announcement, no solid list of which publishers may be coming to Origin was yet given.

EGM’s TAKE: Being that I’m not much of a PC gamer, the split that is growing between Steam and Origin affects me very little. However, I look at it in another way—Netflix. Recent news is hinting that Netflix’s streaming services may be in trouble as current distribution deals are running out, as the big media companies are contemplating taking their content to services that they create and control.

An idea, of course, that I hate. The splintering of how consumers get content may be good for those creating the content, but it’s almost always bad for those trying to enjoy that content. If I were more of a PC gamer, I’d want my library to stay in one place—and, up until now, the preferred place has been Steam.

Source: Gamasutra