Today Electronic Arts gave its earnings call for the fourth quarter of its 2020 fiscal year, and amidst the celebration of the success of titles such as Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, sports games like Madden, and the continuing growth of the Sims 4, the company gave a hint at what’s coming around the corner in the coming fiscal year (running through March 2021) – 14 titles, including unannounced games and offerings for the Nintendo Switch.
Naturally, among the 14 titles, four are EA Sports stalwarts FIFA, Madden NFL, and NHL, with an unannounced EA Sports title. In his prepared remarks, CEO Andrew Wilson said, “EA Sports will also lead for us on the next-generation consoles this year.” However, he did not clarify if that meant all the EA Sports titles would appear on the next-gen systems coming out this holiday. In 2013, when the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One came out, the NHL series didn’t debut on the PS4 and Xbox One until the following year.
The unannounced EA Sports title could be NBA Live. At the end of last year, EA pulled the plug on NBA Live 20 before its launch and declared the series would return with the new systems. Or it could be a new UFC; the non-yearly series’ last entry was in 2018.
In the fine print of the call’s slide presentation, the upcoming unannounced titles are further broken out thusly: Two mobile “soft launches”, one EA HD title (remaster), and four EA Partners games. EA Originals indie titles such as A Way Out are released through EA Partners.
One of the mobile titles could be a version of Skate 3. Wccftech reported on pro skater Jason Dill’s appearance on The Nine Club skating podcast, where Dill said EA approached him in 2019 to appear in a mobile version of Skate 3. Dill asked if there would also be a Skate 4, but Dill said the EA representative told him there wouldn’t be a sequel to the 2010 cult classic.
Other titles making up the roster of 14 for this year include Command & Conquer Remastered, Medal of Honor VR, and Burnout Paradise Remastered for Switch. During the call, Wilson mentioned that the Switch is getting multiple titles, but he didn’t delineate which games are coming. One of these could be FIFA 21, as the soccer series is the only EA Sports franchise on the platform so far.
Finally, already-released titles such as Apex Legends and the Sims 4 will also get new content in the fiscal year.
We’ll likely learn more about EA’s upcoming titles, unannounced or otherwise, when the company holds its annual EA Play event in June (naturally, this year’s it’s digital).
[Sources: Electronic Arts (1), (2)]
Source: Game Informer
