Just over two months into his tenure, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was at Credit Suisse’ 2013 Annual Technology Conference to talk about the company and its games.
One of the many questions Wilson was asked (via Seeking Alpha) revolved around how he thinks the gameplay for Madden, FIFA, and Battlefield would change over the coming years. His answer detailed how he thinks they’ve reached a higher level of quality with the PS4 and Xbox One launch than they did with the previous consoles:
[…] The reality is our teams already starting to work on new innovation for our product. So one of the nuances here is that… this console cycle, both Sony and Microsoft platforms have simplified their architecture and simplified their tool sets.
So in the last transition, we spent the first two to three years actually just trying to figure out how to get the most out of the boxes, and particularly because the two boxes were very different. So the good news now is I think that we have reached the level of quality at launch that we didn’t get through last time. And our teams are already starting to think about investment in new innovation for the future.
In terms of actually talking about that, I think it’s a little early, and certainly we don’t want to give up a competitive advantage on that front. But what I would say is that engagement between you and your friends, and engagement between you and the sport, or you and a subject matter that you love through not just the graphical, but through the online capabilities and the connection capabilities, are going to fundamentally change how you interact with entertainment software in the future.
Looking at five years from now, Wilson believes the home consoles will be “under some fairly stiff competition for the living room from mobile providers,” naming Apple, Google, Roku, and Comcast as examples to “own that living room experience.” However, he does believe that the PS4 and Xbox One have “the single best way to get high-definition interactive entertainment TV and we’re going to work with them to make sure that we can deliver that to consumer.”
What do you think of EA’s PS4 launch titles? Let us know in the comments below.
