EA is going to place the future of its franchises in the hands of its individual studios according to one of its executives.
In an interview with IGN, EA's Chief studios officer Laura Miele spoke about the future of the studio's franchises, specifically mentioning Titanfall and Star Wars Battlefront 2 among others.
During the talk, Miele speaks about how the developers of Titanfall, Respawn Entertainment, has complete control over the franchise. "That team will determine what the future holds for Apex Legends and Titanfall. I don’t believe in directing or telling games teams what to create, it has to come from the player community," she said.
Even though the studio is seemingly focusing on developing Apex Legends, the battle royale hit set in the Titanfall universe, we probably shouldn't rule out any sequels to Titanfall 2, which has an incredibly loyal and passionate player base. "Apex takes place in the Titanfall world and the Respawn team is incredibly proud of that legacy and brand," notes Miele, so it kind of sounds like if players ask enough for Titanfall 3, then Respawn might listen.
Something Miele mentions a number of times throughout the interview is the initial fan backlash to Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and how player feedback helped turn that title around into something completely different from what was first released.
"When I first took this studios leadership role, players were incredibly unhappy with this game," Miele said. "We had made commitments to deliver content to the community, but we didn’t have team members assigned to deliver on these promises. We created free content for players because it was the right thing to do and I felt we owed it to our community of players".
During the talk, Miele also mentions the announced scrapping of Anthem Next, specifically so that EA can divert attention and effort to other key franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, which Miele says was a move to help allocate time and resources to the latter two.
Ultimately, Miele's comments on the autonomy of EA's studios should leave you with a lot of hope for sequels and new IPS from your favorite games and developers; "There is a lot of creative autonomy within Electronic Arts", she says, which points towards how new games can get made. She did caveat this by saying "EA will step in and make decisions as needed", but she made clear that developers are "given agency" to create the games they want to make.
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