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EA working on new IPs to avoid 'life support' scenario
EA is working on an indeterminate number of new intellectual properties, EA Games executive VP Patrick Söderlund told MVCUK. "We have six to eight completely new IPs in the works," Söderlund said. "The day we stop making new IP is when we go onto life support." EA's definition of a "new IP," however, may be a bit more liberal than what that term implies at first blush. "We are working on a new Mirror's Edge game, and although that's not a new IP, it is a revival done in a new way," Söderlund said. "We are developing Star Wars: Battlefront, which to us is a new IP, even though it isn't technically." So by "new," EA doesn't necessarily mean new new, but rather new-ish, or new enough, perhaps. In any case, it does make us wonder what that other handful of fresh IPs are all about. The sky is practically the limit! In fact, there are so many incalculable variables to consider when predicting that sort of thing that we're just going to stop thinking about it. Ah, that's better.
DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront 'most likely' in summer 2015
EA expects to "most likely" release its new Star Wars: Battlefront game alongside Star Wars 7 coming to cinemas, scheduled for mid-2015. Speaking in an investors conference call, EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said the game "will most likely come out around the same time the Star Wars movies start to come out, probably in the summer of '15." Given how EA's multi-year deal with Disney on Star Wars games was only signed in May, it's no surprise the new Battlefront is not coming next year, but mid-2015 doesn't seem too far, far away. Details on the DICE-developed entry in the multiplayer shooter series are also unsurprisingly sparse, but the Battlefield studio has been profuse in sharing its excitement to take on the franchise. EA Games VP Patrick Söderlund said DICE "begged" to make the game, and EA, knowing the force was strong with DICE, obliged.
EA's Söderlund discusses Star Wars: Battlefront, Mirror's Edge reboot
EA Games Label vice president Patrick Söderlund revealed new details and insight regarding DICE's upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront and Mirror's Edge games in a recent interview with CVG. Describing DICE and Star Wars: Battlefront as "a match made in heaven," Söderlund explains that the next Battlefront game was approved at DICE's insistence. "It was almost not happening," Söderlund recalls. "It was just something as boring as resources and availability. The DICE guys Karl Magnus Troedsson and Patrick Bach were talking and I told them we were in dialogues with Disney over this deal and they just looked at me and said, 'Why haven't you spoken to us? What are you doing? We want to make Battlefront.'" "I didn't anticipate them wanting to work on a license – they've always been new IP or their own IP," Söderlund continued. "But they were just like, 'we would kill to make this game' and the whole studio started talking about it like, 'please give us this game'. That's when I called Frank [Gibeau, EA Labels boss] and I realised we had something here. [...] They begged to do it, the opportunity was there and that's exactly why you'll see a game that will be what it needs to be."
