The new look Origin Beta has gone live and players who registered to take part in the closed beta have been sent download links.
The new-look Origin will aim to build a “faster, smarter, more connected” desktop app experience.
The most notable difference is obviously the general look and feel. Despite being quite different, it weirdly does not feel like a massive change. That can be a good or bad thing, depending on what Origin want to achieve with the new look.
The Origin Beta interface retains a similar layout feel to the current version. You can still find all your games in one place.
You can also right-click games to play and there is the option to ‘manage additional content’ for DLC add ons.
But once you click on that, with The Sims 4 at least, there is not actually much to manage. On or first poke around, we did not see an obvious way to turn off selected packs for The Sims, like you can do with the current version of Origin.
One notable difference is that the game home page is way more interactive. For The Sims 4, a video promo players in the background. Hours played did not carry over from the current version of Origin to the new one, though.
You can also double click game tiles to launch a game quickly. We’ll keep testing the Origin Beta version and report back our findings – especially with a new Sims 4 game pack due to be released next week and a pre-release patch to match.
