Last night’s EA Play Live 2020 helped make the week feel a little bit more E3. The stream centred around the usual big franchises from EA, although there was some disappointment that the company was somewhat coy about its next-gen line-up of new IPs.
From a business standpoint, EA’s most significant announcements concerned it bringing its IPs to more platforms. The Sims 4, Titanfall 2, A Way Out and Dead Space 3 all saw immediate launches on Steam, giving the publisher a pretty decent stable of titles now on the platform. Having brought a succession of titles to Steam in recent weeks.
EA has long said that its EA Access subscription service would also be making an unlikely appearance on Steam, the first subscription service to do so, and it narrowed down the date to ‘late summer’ last night. Obviously, EA needs to get a good library of titles on the platform before launching its service, and it will be intriguing to see how it’s integrated into Valve’s platform… and whether others will be given the opportunity to follow.
Also on the multi-platform front, EA announced that Apex Legends would be coming to both Switch and Steam. It will also be implementing cross-play between all platforms, bringing it up to par with key competitors Warzone and Fortnite. That’s all happening in the autumn, and should help further build the game’s audience.
Aside from those, the company announced three new titles from its EA Originals label, including Final Strike Games’ Rocket Arena, Hazelight Studios’ It Takes Two and Zoink’s Lost in Random, all of which are coming to PC, PS4 and XBox One, with the latter coming to Switch too.
Gameplay from Star Wars Squadrons was the high-point of the event, the spiritual successor to the classic X-Wing and Tie Fighter games looked incredible.
Next-gen effort was covered by simply promising incredible new games from great studios: ” Criterion, known for how their games feel, will seamlessly immerse players into a race in a matter of seconds. BioWare creates worlds where players become the hero of their own story. DICE, who set the bar for excellence in audio and visual, are creating epic battles at a scale and fidelity unlike ever before. Motive Montreal are working on a highly ambitious and innovative new game that puts the power and creativity in player’s hands, an experience not possible without next generation technology.”
It’s another sign that this generation shift is a little unlike what’s come before, with EA happy to bide its time with cross-generation titles for now, before getting stuck in with anything designed exclusively for next-gen.
