EA Sports titles like FIFA and Madden NFL may soon drop yearly release schedules to adopt the ‘games as a service’ model, EA CEO, Andrew Wilson, recently stated.
‘Games as a service’ is becoming a popular catchphrase in the industry, and refers to titles like Destiny, Overwatch or World of Warcraft, in which a core game is continually updated or expanded upon to keep players interested. When applied to the likes of an EA Sports title, this means things like roster refreshes would be taken care of via patching rather than a new game release.
“There’s a world where it gets easier and easier to move that code around — where we may not have to do an annual release,” Wilson told Bloomberg. “We can really think about those games as a 365-day, live service.”
EA’s mobile Madden title has already adopted that release method. Released three years ago, the title is continually refreshed.
“When we design a game that lives in a true streaming world, we have to think about screen size and session time,” Wilson said of Madden mobile. “How does a Madden game that exists in the cloud manifest on your mobile phone, one minute at a time? How does that manifest on your 60-inch TV, an hour at a time.”
Wilson’s comments mirror EA’s strategy of late; recently, Visceral Games was shuttered and its Star Wars title moved to EA Vancouver to adopt something similar to the ‘games as a service’ model.
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