It’s the most lucrative genre in the western video games market and EA now believes it is the best positioned publisher in the industry with regards to the FPS genre – and that’s the reason why it wasn’t in the race to sign a deal with Halo developer Bungie.
Upcoming games under the EA banner include Crysis 2 (Crytek), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DICE), Bulletstorm (Epic), Medal of Honor (EA LA) and, of course, Respawn’s yet-to-be-announced (and not necessarily FPS) title.
And any future titles from Bungie won’t be joining the roster thanks the agreement the developer recently struck with EA rival Activision.
At some point in the portfolio plan you’ve got, when you look at Crytek, DICE, Epic, the LA team buildingMoH, and then Respawn, you know we got a pretty damn killer team,” EA Games’ Frank Gibeau told Industry Gamers.
There’s not a lot of opening positions left on that roster and so that was definitely something that played into how we’ve looked at opportunities out there.
But, we’re going for it and I‘ve gotten to know the Bungie guys over the years and they’re a terrific bunch of people, but we’re very pleased and confident with what we got and the franchises in our portfolio.”