I’ve been trawling through the Q1 2019 Results Earnings Call transcript from EA because that’s the kind of fun guy I am, and there’s a couple of interesting nuggets of information.
In regards to Battlefield V, EA’s Blake J. Jorgensen confirmed once again the game would have a Battle Royale mode but would not say when it would be released. He also stated that it will be a mode in the main game and not a free-to-play spin off, but added “We’re interested in possibly experimenting with a essentially free-to-play standalone game that might be in a shooter genre or another genre, but I don’t think that’s how we’re looking at the Battlefield stuff right now.”
The EA representatives state many times that they are heavily investing in new IP’s, none of which have been revealed so far, and they also say they are “investing in streaming over the long term”.
According to the official website, Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out Christmas 2019 and it is in EA’s FY 2020 forecast which runs from April 2019. However, during the Q&A session in the earnings call an investor asks if there will be any other big releases in between the expected annual EA sports titles in 2019 and Fallen Jedi.
So be careful that you don’t take 2020 to be literal, as Andrew described it, because we’re not giving guidance on 2020 yet. And I think Andrew did say there are other things coming. So more to come on that. We don’t like to give everything up in the first quarter of this year. We got to deliver this year first. But trust that there’s most likely other sizable titles — one or two other sizable titles coming. And we’ll see as we give guidance and we’ll give some more color on that as we get into later this year before we ultimately give guidance at the start of next year
So two things to take from that, whatever these new IP’s are it look like one of them may be out next year, but we also shouldn’t take the release schedule for 2020 too literally, does that mean Fallen Jedi may slip? The call also reveals that Respawn are working on a second game alongside Star Wars, perhaps Titanfall 3?
As for Star Wars: Battlefront II. “As we’ve talked about before, we had some issues with the progression system and the monetization system which we’ve since learned from and fixed, and launched a completely new progression system in that game.”
Source: Seeking Alpha
