Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly financial conference call for analysts and investors, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson and chief operating officer Laura Miele talked about upcoming games.
Wilson mentioned that the unannounced “Major IP” game coming in Q4 (between January and March) is one that EA feels “really, really good” about, but they’re not ready to announce it just yet as the marketing and development teams are deciding the appropriate timing for the reveal.
Miele talked about licensed IPs in regard to the new announcement about the deal with Marvel.
She mentioned that Electronic Arts looks at the potential expansion of its community among other things when deciding what games to make. Licensed IPs are a component of expanding and diversifying the community, and casting the net wider.
The Star Wars deal built millions of players into EA’s community and the publisher realized that over 40% of those players have gone on to play other EA games.
Due to that, Electronic Arts sees adding licensed IPs to its portfolio as a “significant engagement model” for its community as it grows.
As a result, the publisher is “incredibly confident” that it’ll build “meaningful content” for its fans within the Marvel deal.
Speaking about Wild Hearts, Wilson mentioned that EA has a long history of co-developing and co-publishing full-price AAA IPs. They don’t do it as much anymore simply because there isn’t as much anymore out there that really fits the bill and matches a AAA quality bar that EA believes can deliver against the expectations of the global community at a full price. Yet, the publisher believes Wild Hearts is one.
It started with what felt like a pretty small idea, but every time EA’s executives saw the product they were wowed and mesmerized by what the developers were doing.
Wilson added that the Monster Hunter genre is “a relatively new genre” (really?), it exploded, and it’s ripe for innovation, creativity, and expansion, and what EA sees the developers doing is all of the things that the community is asking for the genre.
The response so far has been really, really strong and Wilson believes it’s “incredible.” While EA doesn’t really know how big it can be, there is “a path for it to be a really, really cool opportunity” for Electronic Arts, Koei Tecmo, and for the community.
If you’d like to learn more about Electronic Arts’ financial performance during the past quarter, you can read our dedicated article with plenty of info.