Every year we see a new release of a FIFA, NFL, and NHL titles and it seems that EA is thinking about dropping the yearly release development cycle altogether and offer these games as “Games As Service” which makes sense since the games are minor improvements over their predecessors.
Speaking with Bloomberg, EA chief Andrew Wilson hinted that EA might drop the yearly release development cycle for titles like FIFA, Madden NHL, and NFL in favor of a game as a service model meaning instead of a yearly new release, players can pay a subscription fee to receive new content and upgrades.
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. We can really think about those games as a 365-day, live service.
He added that with the streaming services, things have changed a lot, it has changed how people watch television and more. He hinted that EA might move towards streaming games like FIFA, Madden NFL, and NHL which itself present problems like “screen size and session time”.
“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.”
While we won’t be seeing this shift in coming years but, it is an indication of EA’s plans for the future and its focus on Games as Service model which in one form or another has started to pop up in titles published by the company.
What do you think of Electronic Arts dropping yearly releases of FIFA, Madden NFL, and Madden NHL and offer Games as service by streaming them through monthly or yearly subscriptions? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Bloomberg
