Today Electronic Arts announced their Q3 2020 financials (get the full report here) and during the accompanying earnings call, company execs gave some hint as to what’s coming next for the publisher. It seems fiscal year 2021 (which runs from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021) will particularly busy for EA, with the company planning to publish 14 titles. The lineup will include sports games, four internally developed games from established IP, four EA Originals from indie partners, and two mobile titles. Here’s what EA COO Blake Jorgensen had to say about the upcoming plans.
Looking forward to FY 2021 [...] we anticipate live services to be the primary growth driver, followed by the launch of new content across a broad range of genres. We're launching four sports titles, including new games in our blockbuster FIFA and Madden franchises, four other titles that draw from the breadth of our IP, and we'll also publish four titles globally from smaller developers. We also expect two new mobile titles to make it into soft launch. We expect growth to accelerate in fiscal 2022 as we leverage the growing install base of next-generation consoles with the launch of a new Battlefield. This is on top of the launches of FIFA 22 and Madden 22, plus new and ongoing live services and other titles.
According to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, EA is also busy prepping for next-generation consoles and is “ready to lead” the way on the new machines…
We're looking forward to delivering more amazing games from our top franchises, new IP, and new partner indie titles in FY 2021 and beyond. [...] New consoles are coming, and we'll be ready to lead with some of our top titles.
While you can set your clock by EA’s annual sports titles, it will be interesting to see what those other four games they’re working on are, as a lot of the usual suspects are out of the running – a new Battlefield isn’t coming until FY 2022 and EA just released a new Need for Speed, so we won’t be seeing another one for a while. There are those rumors EA is working on a new Star Wars game set during The High Republic era, and Respawn Entertainment founder Vince Zampella is said to be incubating a number of new projects at DICE LA. Could be interesting times ahead.
What do you think? What would you like to see from EA over the coming couple years?
