In its latest quarterly earnings call, EA said it hasn’t forgotten about the Titanfall franchise. Though nothing is currently in the pipeline, the dream of one day seeing Titanfall 3 is not yet dead.

“We really want to keep the team hyper-focused on [Apex Legends] because we see there’s so much opportunity there, so I can’t give you a sense of if and when [Titanfall 3] will come, but it’s still a great brand and we certainly won’t forget about it down the road,” EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen said on the earnings call.

In the meantime, EA seems more than content to rely on the Titanfall spin-off, Apex Legends, to fulfill the publisher’s annual shooter quota–at least for the immediate future. “We view [Apex Legends] as an annual shooter franchise effectively and we’re trying to build that as a 10-year business,” Jorgensen said. “We’re very excited about the roadmap that the Respawn team has put in place.” EA expressed interest in providing further support to Apex Legends in 2020, citing the game reached a playerbase of 70 million in the last quarter.

A new Titanfall game isn’t the only sequel to an EA shooter franchise that’s not currently scheduled for 2020. DICE is getting pulled off the annual track it has been on since 2013’s Battlefield 4, so the studio will not be focusing on Battlefield 6 or a new Star Wars Battlefront in 2020. Instead, over the next year, DICE will develop additional content and provide further support for Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront II.

“The strong results this quarter illustrate the power of our live services and our core franchises,” Jorgensen said in a press release. “Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4, and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations. Looking ahead, we are doubling down on live services combined with our core franchises. We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond.”

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-wont-forget-about-titanfall-3-but-wants-to-focu/1100-6470982/

During its latest quarterly earnings call, EA revealed its intentions to treat Apex Legends as an “annual shooter.” Respawn’s battle royale game has been on a roll lately, with Season 3: Meltdown seeing Apex Legends reach a playerbase of 70 million, and its publisher has indicated it wants to build on that growth for years to come.

“We have heavily invested in live services the past 10 years,” EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen said on the call. “Obviously [Apex Legends] is a new live service which we will invest heavily in to try to continue to grow that business. We view that as an annual shooter franchise effectively and we’re trying to build that as a 10-year business … We’re very excited about the roadmap that the Respawn team has put in place.”

No one at EA clarified what this new designation for Apex Legends means. As a live service game, it’s unlikely–though not impossible–that EA plans to make Apex Legends into its own franchise with new sequels every year as Activision does with Call of Duty and Ubisoft used to do with Assassin’s Creed. It could be that EA plans to have large-scale, meaningful content additions each year. Although this makes the most sense and is in line with trends for live service games, this is speculation on our part.

That said, Jorgensen did reveal what players can expect to see in Apex Legends in the near future. “The key with [Apex Legends]–as is the case with any live service–is test and learn, test and learn,” Jorgensen said. “We’re continuing to add new events in each season to try and understand spending patterns and what people like to spend money on and how much they’ll spend. And we’ll then tune those events over time, so there’s going to be holiday-themed events, like [Fight or Fright], competitive-style events, gameplay-style events, and events associated with new characters or–as you saw in this new season–a new map.”

With Apex Legends being treated as EA’s new annual shooter, the publisher is pushing DICE off of the annual Battlefield and Battlefront track that the studio has been on since 2013’s Battlefield 4. Instead of immediately transitioning to Battlefield 6 or Star Wars Battlefront III, DICE will instead spend the next year focusing on developing new content and providing additional support for Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront II.

Ahead of the call, EA released a press release detailing the studio’s success with live service games this past quarter. “Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4, and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations,” Jorgensen said. “Looking ahead, we are doubling down on live services combined with our core franchises. We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond.”

Though EA is pushing for more games that will keep players invested for longer periods of time, the publisher isn’t completely done with traditional, single-player games. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order–a single-player game with no loot box microtransactions–is EA’s next major release, scheduled to launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 15. Fallen Order’s release will also mark EA’s return to putting its PC games on Steam, not just Origin.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-is-treating-apex-legends-as-an-annual-shooter/1100-6470978/

During EA’s recent financial earnings call, publisher CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that Apex Legends, Respawn Entertainment’s free-to-play battle royale game, will launch on new platforms followings its impressive growth since its launch. Released back in early 2019, Apex Legends is a spin-off of Respawn’s Titanfall series. Instead of giant mecha combat, Apex Legends is a squad-based battle royale game that focuses on squad-based tactics on a large-scale map.

Currently, Apex Legends is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Last May, it was announced that Apex Legends would make its way to Mobile (iOS and Android). However, it has yet to release on other platforms as of this time. The timing for this is especially convenient, as Sony’s PS5 and Microsoft’s Scarlett, the successors to the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively, are expected to release in Fall 2020. In addition to Apex Legends, EA will also publish a new Battlefield game during the fiscal year of 2022, which was also revealed during the earnings call.

Since its debut, Apex Legends has become one of EA’s more popular games, reaching up to 70 million registered players. During the financial earnings call, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen stated that Apex Legends would become one of the publisher’s vital online games going forward. In addition to new content for the game, which has already seen new characters, weapons, and maps in its first year alone, Apex Legends will also launch on new platforms during the 2021 fiscal year.

Recently, Apex Legends launched new content in the form of its Season 3 update, which introduced a brand new character and map to fight on. During the call, Jorgensen praised Apex Legends’ growth since its launch. The CFO also expressed that the free-to-play model, which focuses on regular content drops, will become a key part of their strategy moving forward.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apex-legends-will-release-on-new-platforms/1100-6470975/

Ahead of its quarterly earnings call, EA released the financial results for its latest quarter in a press release. Though there are notable highlights for several of EA’s sports games, Apex Legends also made a big splash in the quarter by reaching 70 million players.

“The strong results this quarter illustrate the power of our live services and our core franchises,” EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen said. “Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4, and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations. Looking ahead, we are doubling down on live services combined with our core franchises. We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond.”

Existing in the same universe as Titanfall and Titanfall 2, Respawn’s battle royale, Apex Legends, has had a busy nine months. The game hit 1 million players within the first eight hours of being released, which increased to 2.5 million after a day and 25 million in a week. Apex Legends Season 2: Battle Charge saw the battle royale game’s map undergo significant changes and the addition of limited-time events. Season 3: Meltdown upped that with a whole new map and the first of Apex Legends’ holiday-themed celebrations: Fight or Fright.

EA is primed to go into the next quarter with several new games already announced. The most significant is another game by Respawn, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 15. Need for Speed: Heat–which implements some welcome changes to its predecessor’s formula–is also on its way, as is a new Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apex-legends-has-reached-70-million-players/1100-6470972/