Tagged with: Electronic Arts

I’d like to say I find it quite painful to write articles on Electronic Arts, whether is be as consultant to YouTube news writers or for the Wii U Blog. It’s almost unheard of for good news to come out of EA, but especially for Nintendo. In the continuation of EA/Nintendo drama, we received some insight on the future of EA’s gaming business model in their latest investor call, which some speculate to be completely anti-Wii U.

You can read more about the latest Electronic Arts investor call after the break:

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Worst company or worst speech? You decide!

Electronic Arts was once again voted the worst company in America for the second year in a row, according to The Consumerist. They “won” the award by the small percentage of 78%. Oh wait, that’s not small at all! So, after winning such a prestigious award, you’d like to think the people on top would try to explain themselves, right? Well, you’d be correct, and indeed, the COO of the company, Peter Moore, gave a great speech as a response.

Because I go ranting on this for a bit, you can read more about this after the break:

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Frank Gibeau of Electronic Arts has shared that, if BioWare wants to do it, they’ll be allowed to work on more titles within the Mass Effect franchise. Assumably, if this happened, they’d also come to the Wii U. Here’s the full quote:

Does [Mass Effect 3's ending] mean you can never tell another story in the Mass Effect universe? No. If (BioWare’s) Casey decides on a story that he wants to tell, guess what? He’s going to be able to step forward at EA and we’re going to back him with capital for him to be able to go build that experience and tell a new story in the Mass Effect universe if that’s what he wants to do. If he wants to do something different, a new IP, he’ll have our backing as well. He’s a profoundly talented guy. He’s got our confidence. And the audience loves him. So that’s how it really works.

Original content is always good too, of course, but at the same time: Mass Effect is awesome. If they could work on a new story, they could use the lessons from their current work, minus the baggage that accumulated over the years. That could lead to something interesting.

Madden NFL 13 and FIFA 13 are confirmed for the Wii U, but Electronic Arts never confirmed if NHL 13 was being prepared for the console. A representative for the company, however, has said that we should “definitely keep [our] eyes open in the coming weeks”, so maybe we’ll see something announced on September 13th.

Peter Moore of Electronic Arts has said they’re “keeping a very close eye” on the Wii U, and that people should “never underestimate Nintendo”. And while there’s no more announcements for the time being, they have “great franchises poised to be on [the] platform”. Maybe we’ll hear more on the 13th of September.

When talking about the similarities of the Wii U’s GamePad and Microsoft’s SmartGlass, Cam Weber of Electronic Arts said:

Conceptually we look at it (Wii U and SmartGlass) in the same kind of way. I think our designers are trying to solve problems around, ‘How do you take advantage of the smart glass, on either device, and what kind of functionality does that unlock? And I think it’ll benefit both. To be more specific, we have Wii U in development now [for Madden], we’ll learn from it and it’ll take us further in terms of delivering on the SmartGlass.

It’s worrying that both pieces of technology have been lumped together since it’s only the GamePad that’s totally integrated with the system it’s released with. But at least EA seems to prioritising the GamePad and using it as the leading platform when it comes to their touchscreen functionality.

Electronic Arts is bringing Mass Effect 3 to the Wii U, but that’s all we know for the moment. Luckily, Frank Gibeau has confirmed that they’ve “got a couple of more games in development for Wii U”, and they will:

…have a bigger line-up for Wii U than we did on the Wii. It is the first next-generation platform coming out so we’re really supporting it. Just looking at E3 and where we’re at, we wanted to hold our fire a little bit on a couple of the other games that we’re working on. We’ll have more announcements this summer on the rest of the Wii U line-up.

He also mentioned that:

We’ll do some new, unique things with it on the Wii U controller and the second screen that we’re innovating on. You’ll hear more later this summer.

Fingers crossed that those “new, unique things” are both new and unique.