EA on Battlefield: Not Just Building a Game but a Platform to Drive Live Service
In the latest quarterly financials earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked to give an update about the development of the Battlefield IP. Interestingly enough, Wilson’s answer points at a bigger focus on live services and how the franchise is being built as a platform to deliver it.
Douglas Creutz (TD Cowne): Just wondered if you could give an update on how the various projects that are associated with the Battlefield IP are progressing and maybe how that plays into some of the things you said earlier about giving your big franchises time to gestate so that they’re great when they come out
Andrew Wilson (EA CEO): Yes. I mean we don’t have any date announcements or future announcements, if that’s the question, certainly this time. What I’d say is I think we’ve put together an extraordinary creative leadership team. I know we’ve got the team gathering actually this week in Sweden. I had to call this morning with some of the leadership, and they’re very bullish on how that’s progressing. I think we’ve got extraordinary confidence in that team and extraordinary confidence in the progress they’re making against the future of that franchise.
And I come back to we’re not just building a game. We’re building a platform, content as a platform, to drive live services over the decades to come. And so as we continue to move through this process and becomes appropriate, we’ll share more about the future of Battlefield. But it is firmly implanted in that first pillar of our strategy: building games and experiences that attract and entertain massive online communities across platforms, across business models, across geographies. And we think that Battlefield is going to be a meaningful part of our future. And we’ll share more time and share more as time progresses.
