Electronic Arts have been speaking a lot over the past few days about their stance in the gaming industry in general, talking about how they are saving any new IPs for when the next-gen consoles are released and that they won’t be making the same mistakes next year as they did this year. Now word has come out that they have completely dropped the notion of single-player games and are now, instead, focusing solely on multiplayer games and interconnection between platforms, something we have seen slowly making its way onto their mobile games lately.
As EA Labels President Frank Gibeau basically describes it, EA has effectively turned their back on single-player experiences. Instead EA is focusing on bringing more multiplayer and social aspects to all their games including future releases. This is something we have seen already on Android with EA titles and it looks as though it will be more prevalent in the near future. Just like in Mass Effect Infiltrator, future games will soon have elements, social or otherwise, that are accessible across numerous platforms.
This doesn’t mean you can’t play any of their future games by yourself. It just means that all future games will support multiplayer and social functionality. Cross-platform tie-ins are also going to be more numerous as well, whether it is a game-based tie-in like Mass Effect Infiltrator or an application that lets you access and tweak different aspects of a certain game.
FIFA is a perfect example – available across 12 different platforms, FIFA fans can check their standings on their mobile device or tablet, manipulate their teams on Facebook or play an immersive game of FIFA on their PC or console. Everything is connected so the user can pick up just where they left off from anywhere. We’re deploying similar experiences in our other popular brands over the next year including Madden, Battlefield and SimCity and you’ll continue to see more and more of this from EA. – EA Labels President Frank Gibeau
So we can expect, starting in the near future, that we will be seeing a lot more cross-platform multiplayer and social game elements arriving in future Android games for Electronic Arts. We can also assume that there will be more companion applications on the way as well.
Website Referenced: The Escapist Magazine
