On this week’s edition of SGO Press Pass, Mike and Jake spoke about their outlooks on the 2021 NBA 2K League season while also speaking about some potentially big EA Sports expansion news. EA Sports looks to flip a negative narrative with the acquisition of Codemasters (the team behind Formula 1) and Metalhead software (the team behind Super Mega Baseball).
That being said, the EA Sports side of the team will be relatively hands-off, leaving both respective companies above to handle the bulk of the planning and design. But there’s a bigger question to ask here: What does the acquisition of these two stand-alone companies mean?
EA is seemingly keeping pace with the rising popularity of non-mainstream sports gaming. The addition of Super Mega Baseball into their repertoire brings much-needed attention away from complaint-ridden games such as Madden NFL 21 and gives consumers other outlets when it comes to EA.
This was spoken about during the episode as being a return of an EA BIG style of gaming lines as “they know there is now a market for that,” in regards to the expansions of the sports games covered by and published through EA. This expansion has caused some talking internally of an EA Sports BIG 2.0.
EA Making Major Expansion Moves?
While a revival of the name hasn’t been announced, SGO Managing Editor Mike Straw is hearing that talks within the higher-level executives of EA do involve a new version of the classic subdivision.
“I’ve had sources, not at EA Sports but higher, tell me that EA is looking at a version of EA Big,” Mike said on the show.
He continued, “They [EA] know there’s now a market for that again. They’ve had talks for about two-and-a-half years now of doing something like this, and it really got serious over the last 12-15 months.”
It was also mentioned on the show that the company is looking to make more studio acquisitions to continue this build-out. As far as a timeline is concerned, it shouldn’t be expected for 2021 rather a late 2022 or early 2023 if EA moves forward.
This hype behind the expansion raises eyes for all lovers of arcade-style games, less popular and prevalent sports as EA looks to fill a hole, that they seemingly created, with non-simulation games
The potential for games, as Mike said during the episode, is so high that we could potentially see down the road a “Super Mega Football,” as Metalhead has spoken about the expansion of their brand going away from just baseball. While there are no talks of a Super Mega Football, the potential and audience seem to be there.
Whether it’s speculation or something that we’ve seen announced EA has our attention. The ball is in their court now as we look towards E3, EA Play, and future gaming announcements.
For more on the purchase of Super Mega Baseball, check out our exclusive details on what the studio is planning for the franchise.
