Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello envisions Origin -- an EA-exclusive Steam knock-off -- as the videogame equivalent of HBO and Netflix combined. He made this rather staggering claim during a recent financial call, and I'm not offering my opinion because I'm laughing too much.

"We're seeing good uptake," he said of the service. "By way of comparision, when we’ve had good success on Steam and then the same title on Origin, we see similar revenues to a service that is much more mature and of higher scale at this point in time. So we’re seeing good revenue flow through on Origin. And of course that’s a good thing, since we capture virtually 100% margins there."

One investor asked if Origin would offer third-party content, and Riccitiello expressed interest: "I think forward-looking publishers really want their content on any and every platform possible. One more sale is better than not. By way of example, even though we have Origin, we are pushing EA content digitally on any and every e-tailer platform we can.

"... We hope to be HBO meets Netflix for gaming. But we’re also very keen to have our content distributed to anywhere and everywhere gamers are."

EA Wants Origin To Be The 'HBO Meets Netflix' Of Gaming [Gamasutra]