Origin now allows you to send/receive gifts, have a wishlist - but not without some bizarre limitations

Origin now offers two of the most basic store features.

EA has made some updates to the Origin store to bring about some features users of the service have been asking for ever since they were forced to use it with Battlefield 3.

The two new features are the ability to add items to your wishlist, as well as gift games and DLC to other users. Both of these went live earlier alongside a store-wide Black Friday sale.

There are a number of limitations and other quirks you should be aware of, however. First, you can only gift already-released content, not pre-orders (including DLC). Secondly, you're only able to gift EA-published games, not third-party content.

You can't gift virtual currency, or bundles that include virtual currency. The gifting process is easy, just click the dropdown menu on the 'buy' button and follow the on-screen instructions. Your Origin Access discount applies to gifts, too.

In addition, you can gift higher editions of a game to a friend who already owns the base game.

However, and perhaps the strangest limitation of all, is that you're only able to gift friends in the same country as you. What's interesting here is that EA doesn't have a regional limitation, but a country-specific one.

As for wishlisting, you'll be able to find a list of all the games you wishlist under your profile, which can be seen by others.

By comparison, Steam has been offering the ability to gift friends anything on the store for years, even if they live in different regions. That said, PSN and Xbox Live still haven't be able to offer the same ability.