Yesterday, EA executives held an earnings call to recap the final quarter of the 2016 fiscal year. However, they also talked about plans for the 2017 fiscal year, which included some marquee games such as Titanfall 2 and new Star Wars titles.
Robots Or World War I?
In a slide presentation that showed EA’s publicly announced games for the coming fiscal year, the publisher set Titanfall 2 for a Q3 release window. However, it shares that same quarter with what EA hopes to be a major moneymaker for the company, Battlefield 1, which launches on October 21. You would think that one of the two games, presumably Titanfall 2, would get eclipsed in sales compared to Battlefield 1. However, EA CEO and director Andrew Wilson believes that wouldn’t be the case, as the two games have different mechanics for a first-person shooter.
“Some people play very quick play, some people [prefer] more strategic play, and some people want both in different context,” Wilson said. “The result of those [methods], we feel like we actually have a really strong position to deliver the broadest set of game play mechanics as it relates to first-person shooter genre across the two titles, and feel very confident that we are well-positioned to do very well in that category in a year.”
The Future Of Star Wars Games
At the moment, the big Star Wars title for EA is Battlefront, but a sequel is already planned for next year. According to CFO and executive vice president Blake J. Jorgensen, the next game will have “bigger and better worlds” because the developers at DICE will take inspiration from the new Star Warsmovies as well as the older films. In addition, Wilson also teased that a new version of Star Wars Battlefront was coming later this year to PlayStation VR. However, he didn’t provide any additional details.
Other than Battlefront, EA is also working on multiple games in the Star Wars universe such as an action game from the new Motive Studios and longtime EA team Visceral Games. Jorgensen said that the new game is coming out at some point in the following year. There’s also the newly announced partnership with Titanfall 2 studio Respawn Entertainment for a third-person, action/adventure title.
Overall, EA is looking at a new Star Wars game every year for the next three to four years in conjunction the major and minor Star Wars films from Disney, so fans will get a double dose of entertainment in movies and games.
Wait And See
With the exception of Battlefield 1, the dates for Titanfall 2 and the many Star Wars games are subject to change. In fact, we saw this with another EA-owned title yesterday. Mass Effect: Andromeda was supposed to come out this year, but was delayed to early 2017.
However, we’re going to learn more about some of these new projects in a few weeks. EA is hosting its first EA Play event from June 12-14, aka the week of E3. EA pulled out of the show floor this year and will hold the event at The Novo, one block away from the LA Convention Center.
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