EA is quite aware as to how profitable and popular free-to-play titles and franchises have become in recent years with more and more players flocking in to get a taste of it. EA, itself, recently made a huge leap toward gaining momentum in that regard following the F2P model for Plants vs. Zombies 2 and Command & Conquer. However, EA doesn’t wish to stop there, and recently discussed more on the prospects of F2P titles.
In a recent interview with Engadget at Gamescom, COO Peter Moore stated, “The ability for you to be able to interact with those franchises on a free-to-play basis is going to be part-and-parcel with every major franchise we do now,” the truth of which is highlighted with titles such as Heroes of Dragon Age and FIFA 14 which are both set to be free to play, and available on mobile devices.
“We don’t ship a game at EA that is offline. It just doesn’t happen. And gamers either want to be connected so their stats and achievements reflect who they are, or you want the full multiplayer experience on top of that. We don’t deliver offline experiences anymore,” he added.
While this may not sound that big a deal for most of the fans, it should to be noted that the new decision from EA comes after the company introduced SimCity's controversial always-online restrictions, and the problems it faced as a result. The game generated such an amount of criticism that there was actually a survey conducted to determine whether fans actually wanted an offline mode.
Moore went on to elaborate that EA's biggest franchises like Battlefield and FIFA have relied rather heavily on their online components in the past, and that EA's The Sims 4 will now include an offline single-player experience. The likes of Battlefield and FIFA, as usual, will continue to retain their campaign and career modes respectively.
Moore also talked about the console market and how EA is approaching it, claiming that EA has currently focused the bulk of its workforce on the console market while the company prepares for the next-generation of consoles, set to arrive later this year. This will be then followed by the mobile titles, and then free-to-play PC games.
According to him, the next-generation consoles like Xbox One and PS4 are expected to have a significant incursion of free-to-play games. Check out the entire interview below.