Electronic Arts chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen recently attended the UBS Global Technology Conference 2017 and talked about the future of the video game company. Jorgensen gave an update on BioWare’s “Anthem” and teased the new action game from Motive.
Jorgensen pointed out that EA has been releasing less and less of new titles. The video game publisher is trying to change that citing “Star Wars Battlefront” as an example of layering in more franchises over time. He said that this is what EA is trying to do with BioWare’s “Anthem” game, which he had already had the chance to play.
“I was up in Edmonton with the team a few weeks ago, looking at the game and playing it. It’s looking very exciting, the team’s done an amazing job and we’re really excited about that for next year,” Jorgensen said, according to GameIndustry.biz.
“Anthem” is slated to be released sometime in 2018 and will be available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Gamers got their first glimpse of the game back in June during this year’s E3 conference. What’s certain about “Anthem” so far is that it will be an action role-playing game set in an open world science fiction environment and will have online multiplayer game modes.
Jorgensen also talked about how EA is lacking in action games. This is yet another reason why the company is working on “Anthem” and why Motive is creating a brand new action game. “Action is clearly the place we’re missing the most, and the reason we’re building Anthem and the new title that Jade Raymond’s team at Motive is building in Montreal,” Jorgensen said.
“That’s the largest sector in gaming. It’s one we haven’t spent a lot of time in because we were so focused on sports and first-person shooters. We feel like there’s a huge opportunity there.”
There’s not a lot of information on Motive’s upcoming action game, but Jorgensen did tease that it has a “lot of new, interesting gameplay that I don’t think anyone’s seen before,” according to GameSpot. The EA CFO also said that this game will have “new ideas that have never been thought of before.”
The new action game from Motive is being directed by Jade Raymond, who’s mostly known for creating Ubisoft’s very first “Assassin’s Creed” game. Raymond first joined EA back in 2015 and formed Motive Studios in Montreal. The new EA IP is expected to be an ambitious game that could have an open world environment that’s comparable to Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto” franchise. Jorgensen said that Motive’s new action game would probably be released sometime during EA’s Fiscal Year 2021.
Jorgensen also briefly talked about EA’s planned game streaming service. The CFO said that the service might see a commercial offering within the next two or three years, according to DualShockers. This means that it could launch in 2019 or, at the latest, in 2020. Jorgensen also said that it’s working alongside an unspecified partner for the upcoming game streaming service.
The EA CFO also cited the challenges that they are facing when it comes to delivering that type of service. He said that there’s still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to bandwidth and faster connections, but Jorgensen also said that they’ve already done tests where they were able to reduce latency to “virtually zero.”
EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said that they are very excited about BioWare’s “Anthem.”