EA is one of the top gaming companies around, with successful franchises like FIFA and Battlefield under its belt. The company has released titles for all platforms around with EA known to have a special respect for Sony. However, the company doesn’t agree with the idea floating around that it has a "special" respect for Microsoft.
With EA recently concluding deals with Microsoft that saw upcoming titles such as Titanfall being exclusive to the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and digital copies of FIFA 14 being handed out with Xbox One pre-orders in Europe, EA’s Frank Gibeau said that there is no special reason why EA has struck these deals, and that it's purely business.
Gibeau called EA relationship with Sony “very good,” stating, “We're changing nothing in our policy about being platform-agnostic. One of the things that struck me this week is how a tactical deal with one of our platform partners has been blown out and perceived as strategic tilt - that's a messaging error on our part. There is no strategic tilt.”
“The Sony platform and the Xbox platform are both very important to us. If you look at the previous generation we did tactical deals with both Sony and Microsoft throughout the cycle. Titanfall is different, it's an EA Partners game - everything else is platform agnostic,” he told CVG.
Gibeau added that Sony has been operating exceptionally well on the next-gen transition, that it hardware's hot, and the company is clear and consistent with its policies. He said that Sony is “showing some amazing things with indies, so overall I couldn't be more pleased with how they're executing. I hope both systems are successful - EA succeeds when more platforms are doing well.”
Does this mean EA will be providing the PS4 with exclusive titles? Gibeau stated that it’s a long cycle, “and certainly there’s potential with Sony exclusivity deals too. I can tell you now, our internal games, the games we make ourselves, will be multiplatform.”
TitanFall is an FPS, where players have their choice of romping around, doing battle on foot, or in gigantic mechs called Titans. It's rumored that Valve's Source engine will be utilized for the game alongside Microsoft's Cloud service for servers and in-game calculations. Respawn Entertainment is currently developing the game for release on the Xbox One and PC, while another studio is working on a version for the Xbox 360, with EA set to publish all three.
