Author: dpugh007

As it stands today, the physical gaming market is still very big business for Electronic Arts, but the FIFA and Battlefield publisher is bullish on a more digital-centric future.

Speaking today at a Nasdaq investor briefing in Europe, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen pointed out that the company already makes more than half of its total revenue from digitial sources. This is spread between full-game downloads, add-on content, subscriptions, and mobile. The other half is physical, which is a significant chunk of the pie, but digital may overtake it in the coming years.

EA’s latest numbers showed that 25 percent of its full games were downloaded last fiscal year, spanning Origin, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network; that figure will rise to “closer to 30 percent” for the current fiscal year. Some games skew higher toward digital than others, Jorgensen said, without naming any names.

While impediments like bandwidth speed and the need for a credit card still exist, Jorgensen said consumers are driving the trend towards an all-digital future because ultimately it’s convenient.

“Like in books, music, film, and TV, we see that the consumer will ultimately consume [games] digitally,” Jorgensen said.

Over the next five years, Jorgensen predicted that full-game download figures for EA games could reach 50 percent. This benefits EA, as the margins are higher for digital products that aren’t sold at a physical retailer. Brick and mortar stores remain important, Jorgensen said–for now at least.

“Like everything else, the consumer is ultimately going to default to convenience” — Blake Jorgensen

“We’re careful to continue to work with our retail partners; they are very important in the mix, but we’re also ultimately trying to be where the consumer ultimately wants to consume the product,” he said.

For its part, GameStop–one of the biggest video game retailers in the world–is preparing for a more digital world. The retailer announced earlier this year that 50 percent of its total revenue will come from non-physical sources by 2019. Just this month, GameStop’s revenue took a hit in part because Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and other major games failed to sell up to expectation, suggesting that digital sales are creeping up fast.

For Jorgensen, he believes getting in a car and driving to a store might be a thing of the past.

“Like everything else, the consumer is ultimately going to default to convenience,” he said. “If it’s a choice of getting in the car and driving to the store and the weather is bad outside, if you want to download it, I think you’ll see more people do that.”

Helping drive digital adoption, Jorgensen said, are consoles that come with larger hard drives. He said 1 TB is considered the “standard” today, though the most heavily advertised consoles–the $300 Xbox One S and PS4 Slim–come with 500 GB hard drives. Both console families have 1 TB options, too.

Also during the event today, Jorgensen talked about the future of the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront franchises. Check out the story linked below to learn more.

• EA Exec Teases “Much Bigger” Star Wars Battlefront Sequel, Says No New Battlefield Soon

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Speaking today at an investor briefing in Europe, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen discussed a number of interesting topics, including the future of the Battlefield and Battlefront franchises.

Starting with Battlefield, Jorgensen confirmed that there won’t be another game in the series anytime soon. “We won’t have another Battlefield for a couple of years,” he said during a Nasdaq speaking event, suggesting the next one might not come until 2018 or later.

Though he didn’t give anything away about what this game will be, Jorgensen was asked how EA is thinking about further engaging players in the product. He was asked if the EA Sports Ultimate Team model could be applied to Battlefield–and it sounds like EA is cooking something up.

“We’re looking at all of our games and asking, ‘How might we provided additional opportunities for the player to engage?’ The players want to engage deeply in the game,” the executive said.

Jorgensen said you can poll EA executives and developers and they’ll tell you that driving engagement is the company’s principal focus for all of its games, ahead of financial considerations. At the same time, he pointed out that if people engage with a game more, “they may monetize more over time.”

Another key consideration is to keep the core gameplay intact. EA is “looking for ways to [deepen engagement] without disturbing the gameplay,” Jorgensen said, pointing out that FIFA‘s Ultimate Team mode doesn’t take away from the bread and butter of the franchise.

Finding a way to add an Ultimate Team-style mode to Battlefield is overall a “great challenge” and an “exciting” one,” Jorgensen said.

“It’s not just about building another game. If we can build another stream of revenue that’s high-profit, it’s highly accretive to the overall company,” he explained.

Also during the event, Jorgensen discussed the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront sequel. Some criticized the game for not going deep enough, something that Jorgensen acknowledged in the past and again today.

“If there was criticism, they just wanted more,” he said. “So we’re taking that criticism to heart as we build the next game and trying to address any of the issues that they had.”

The first Battlefront, which shipped 14 million copies to become one of the best-selling Star Wars games in history, focused on characters and locations from the original trilogly. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Leia, Darth Vader, etc. The sequel, however, will leverage “the new movies,” Jorgensen said (repeating what he said earlier), which should give the game an opportunity to reach a wider audience.

Overall, Jorgensen described Battlefront 2 as a “much bigger, much more exciting Battlefront.”

The game, which has not yet been formally announced, is reportedly due out in fall 2017. It’s being made by EA-owned studios DICE and Motive Studios.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is not the only Star Wars project currently in the works at EA. Titanfall developer Respawn is making a third-person action adventure game, while Dead Space studio is making a Star Wars game, too, under the leadership of Uncharted director Amy Hennig.

The first Battlefront’s next expansion, Rogue One: Scarif, adds content and characters from the upcoming movie. The DLC comes out in December, before the film arrives.

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Sony has announced that one of its PlayStation Experience panels this weekend will be for Hideo Kojima’s highly anticipated and mysterious PlayStation 4 game Death Stranding. A panel starting at 1 PM PT on Saturday, December 3, will see Kojima and “special guests” discuss Death Stranding.

No further details about what to expect from the panel, or who the guests are, was divulged in the PlayStation Blog post announcing the panel. Additionally, Kojima will attend an autograph-signing session from 2-2:45 PM PT on December 3.

There will be two other panels on December 3, one at 12 PM PT and the other at 2 PM PT. Both of these are are listed as “unannounced” panels, suggesting they could be for unannounced games.

Three panels are scheduled for December 4, including one about Killzone developer Guerrilla Games’ action role-playing game Horizon: Zero Dawn. Go to the PlayStation Blog to learn more.

There will be more than 100 playable games at PlayStation Experience as well–you can see a full list here. The show, which takes place at the Anaheim Convention Center December 3-4, is open to the public. Tickets are still on sale and can be purchased here.

In addition to the panels and playable games, there will be a keynote at 10 AM PT on December 3. GameSpot will bring you all the news from the event as it’s announced.

What are you hoping to see at PSX this year? Let us know in the comments below!

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