The game industry is also on the way to consolidation, but Electronic Arts has not commented on whether another company can actually acquire the publisher.
Andrew Wilson, the publisher’s chief executive of the quarterly business report during the event, he sidestepped the reaction to rumors surrounding the acquisition with his characteristic corporate, marketing nonsense: “I think we are in an incredibly good position. We will soon be the largest stand-alone, independent developer and publisher of interactive media in the world. I think we have the most incredible teams in the industry and are attracting more and more incredible talent. We have a community of 600 million and we are certainly well on our way to our goal of bringing one billion people into the game worldwide. […] I don’t think we would be in a stronger position as an independent company. Our goal is always to take care of our people, our players and our shareholders, and if there’s ever a way to do that differently than we’re doing it today, of course I have to be open to that. But I can already say today that we are very, very confident and excited about our future.” In Hungarian: if a good offer comes along, Electronic Arts gives in…
Meanwhile, the publisher does not neglect single-player games (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, Dead Space Remake, but the new Mass Effect can also be included). Wilson got a question: How do single-player products fit into the EA portfolio? “On the whole, our players have these basic motivations (inspiration, escape, social connection, competition, self-improvement, creation). These are the things that bring us together as fellow players, and creating worlds, building characters, and telling stories is very important in realizing some of these motivations. When we think about our portfolio and its construction, we think in two key vectors. One: how can we tell incredible stories? Two: how can we build huge online communities? And how do we bring these two things together?
So when we look at our portfolio, the question is, how do we do this? How do we build these worlds and tell these stories? How do we develop global online communities? And how do we bring these two things together to realize motivations? And if we do that, we’ll see both our network grow and the amount of time players in our network spend in and around our games. And the way we think about single-player games, we think they’re a very, very important part of the overall portfolio that we provide to satisfy those core motivations. The way we design this over time is really just watching our community and looking at how they’re spending their time and where motivations are being met and where they’re not. And we’ll try to supplement that with new online games, new multiplayer games and new single-player games,” said Wilson. So they realized that forcing live service was not the best idea.
But Chris Suh, EA’s chief financial officer, pointed out that the live service accounts for almost three-quarters of the company’s cash flow: “When you think about the impact on the model and the financial impact of that, I think the first thing you always have to keep in mind is that live services still make up over 70% of our business and it’s a proven, highly reliable, highly recurring revenue stream and will still be the driving force behind our profit and loss in the long term. Second, we’ve talked a lot about our investments, both in live services and in launching the single-player titles that you’ve already seen. And so we continue to invest over time; our long-term growth will continue to invest in the continued, stable performance of our live services business.”
So they won’t give up what makes them money. It is certain that EA Sports FC 23 will also have Ultimate Team next year…
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