EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, has tapped masterfully into the greater machine spirit of corporate jargon to deliver news that’ll doubtlessly have you very excited about the future of Battlefield 6: “This isn’t just a product. We’re really building out Battlefield as a platform.” I’m salivating already.
Alright, in fairness, Wilson was preaching the monetisation choir—delivering this speech in an earnings call (thanks, VGC), wherein I’m sure lots of people with more money than me are actually keen to hear about EA’s business strategy.
Still, it’s a sign that one of gaming’s biggest publishers is going to do ‘biggest gaming publisher’ things, and try to turn Battlefield into its very own Call of Duty/Fortnite megastructure, because hey. EA should have one of those.
Effusively nattering about the game off the back of the recent Battlefield 6 trailer, Wilson bragged that “We’ve been investing more behind this Battlefield than any Battlefield product before it … And you’ll hear a lot more about this in just two days’ time, and all will become more clear about the nature of our investment over the last four years, with four studios building against this launch to date.”
If you liked the look of that trailer, then there’s good news here, I guess—EA’s all in on Battlefield 6, baby! “We’re all in as a company on it. You may have seen the release trailer just a week or so ago. That was very well received. Of course, it’s just a release trailer. Most of our gamers are sitting there waiting for the big reveal that comes in a couple of days.”
This ominous reveal, which is either a dev diary or the invention of Skynet based on Wilson’s enthusiasm, is being spread far and wide by the best influencers and YouTubers that EA money can sponsor: “We have hundreds of creators and influencers flying into LA and to destinations around the world. They’ll spend all day with the products tomorrow, and they’ll begin streaming that product, out to their fan bases, on Thursday.”
Wilson? Hey, buddy. You said it wasn’t “just a product”, and you’re using the word “product” a whole lot. Here we call those games. He can’t hear me? Ah well.
“In addition to the various pieces of the overall experience that players have been seeing as part of Battlefield Labs—which was a very new way for us to to really gain alignment with the community around the development of this this product, this platform—this will be the first time people really see the true scale of what we’ve been building and get sneak peeks at what’s to come.”
I’m only semi-fluent in Salespitchian, but Battlefield Labs is (based on this FAQ) basically a test server. If by “very new way”, Wilson here means ‘something MMORPGs have been doing for decades’ then, fair play. Still, whatever EA’s got in its back pocket, you can count on it being big, big, big if Wilson’s to be believed. Or maybe it’ll just be an ugly Rick and Morty crossover, that’s what platforms do.
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