Yesterday Game Informer published an article where they interviewed Cam Weber and Matt Bilbey who serve as senior vice president and general manager at Madden developer EA Tiburon and FIFA developer EA Canada respectively.
During the interview, Game Informer asks a number of interesting questions. To start things off, they discuss the success of EA’s Ultimate Team mode, and ask if the company had ever thought about creating a game dedicated to that mode. Faithful Ultimate Team fans will be happy to know that the short answer is no, according to Weber.
“When you look at our players in our telemetry data, those who actually play Ultimate Team are our deepest, engaged users … segmenting those groups and pulling them out doesn’t make sense. Every time we have that conversation it ends quickly and we decide not to do that.”
Another question for PC players is whether or not we’ll see more EA Sports games on PC. Unfortunately for that crowd, it seems like more PC games aren’t in the cards despite the growing demand. Weber says that PC gaming isn’t as good for them as it used to be, but that they’re open to the idea of returning to the system.
“I think with Madden in particular, it used to be a good business, and then it declined and the economics just didn’t make sense anymore.”
Game Informer also brought up the NCAA license, to ask where the legal situation is in regards to possibly doing a new game. From the sound of things, a mobile installment seems to be a more likely bet, but don’t expect anything too soon. Especially since Bilbey admits to not being very well informed on the subject.
“We’re very fortunate in that I have no idea what’s going on with that. I can say, because I’ve spoken to Cam about it, it’s a similar answer – the opportunity on mobile to test something and do something there is perhaps the one that’s in nearer sight. But I don’t keep up to speed with the legal wranglings of the NCAA conversations.”
Those seem to be the most important questions from the interview, but there are plenty more. I’d recommend giving it a read if you can find the time.
As always, stay tuned to SGO for the latest news on EA Sports titles.