In the latest chapter of the NFT story, EA has again chimed in on the technology and its place in their game portfolio. In the past, the company has seemed willing to explore NFTs but now, EA may be backing off a little bit.
During the company's recent financial results, CEO Andrew Wilson responded to investor questions about NFTs. Here's what he had to say on the company's growth (thanks, Eurogamer):
"Whether that's part of the NFT and the blockchain? Well, that remains to be seen. And I think the way we think about it, is we want to deliver the best possible player experience we can. And so we're going to - we will evaluate that over time. But right now, it's not something that we're driving audience."
So, to cut out some of the 'CEO speak', EA is looking into NFTs just like Ubisoft and others, but they don't want to see the same community reaction that we saw with Ubisoft Quartz. Who'd have thought?
Right now, that's probably a wise idea. After publisher Team17 decided to jump on the NFT train, multiple developers who'd worked under Team17 spoke out against the technology. The backlash eventually led to Team17 pulling the plug on its NFT project.
Will EA get into NFTs? Or is it just too much bad press? Let us know in the comments.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 7
Again, this is why complaining can be good.
If no one vocally showed support against this type of stuff, they'd just do it. It's almost as if words have power.
To be fair to Wilson, he was never the strongest pro-NFT voice out there. He jumped in front of the buzzword early but also said that he basically had no idea how it would be used or monetized at the time. You'd think he'd been the first, but he's been hesitant or distant to them from the beginning. Combined with EA backing away from services and returning to a strong single player focus, EA is starting to become the darling of the core gamer again in some ways while other companies are rushing into what EA had become for years.
Team17 is the most fun though. Who takes something controversial like NFT and then names it something like "MetaWorms"?
Is that like Horse Guts(TM) Brand Tooothpaste?
EA!? Thinking About The Fans!? WHAT TIMELINE IS THIS!?
@NEStalgia Lets not give them the benefit of the doubt. This is still the same company that sales all kinds of card packs for games every year while removing features from franchise modes . They called loot boxes surprise boxes. Charged people renting games 10$ to play multiplayer. Abandoned Andromeda, Anthem and tried to monetize star wars to oblivion just to name a few things.
While I am happy they maybe are taking the correct path with this I don't trust them at all.
@NEStalgia sorry I wasn't meaning to rant at you I might not like ea these days. However mass effect legendary was awesome if they ever make madden franchise what it used to be ill love them again I suppose.
@VisitingComet1 I don't disagree in general, actually. EA, right now, is kind of riding a fine line. They're still doing some of the scummy stuff on the sports games side, and then there's the whole Battlefield disaster going on, but they're also showing a lot of sparks of remembering who they once were before all that. I don't expect they'll be getting rid of the scummy practices in the sports games category, it's too important to their revenue at this point to give up. But they seem to have gone out of their way to distance themselves from "surprise mechanics" elsewhere and have taken a renewed interest in their traditional games. 5 years ago they idea they'd reboot Dragon Age and Mass Effect, both, while also making good single player Star Wars games would have been unthinkable. It's the company that publicly said all games need to have an online component, and now they've said they're removing online entirely from DA to focus on single player. And they recently announced they're backing away from requiring the use of the Frostbite engine on all their games which hamstrung them for a generation.
They got a new head of studios a few years ago, and she seems to be taking a hatchet to most of the rot in their company. It's like, on a smaller scale, watching MS turn around after Matrick was replaced by Spencer. It may not last, if it's not as profitable, demand to put it all back will come from above. But it's sure fun seeing sparks of old EA return. They sit on a mountain of great unused IP, and they have a shedload of talent. If you go back before the Riccitiello era, they had a lot of the best games, and an EA published game was always guaranteed to be a polished game. Even on the rare occasion during the bad years they put out a normal game, they were great games (Titanfall 2, Mirror's Edge/ME2, the NFS series before they ruined it, etc.)
But you're right to not trust them yet. We'll see how they do over the next few years. But I like what I'm seeing so far from the new studio leadership, and it takes a long time for the poisoned well of the past decade to run clear. Their hesitant stance on NFT last year that seemed aimed at placating the shareholders by saying "oh we're totally into NFT!....but haven't actually considered how we'd even use them for anything" even before it was cool to hate NFT was interesting, because the rest of the industry has done everything they can to jump in front of NFT and EA, the original worst of the cashgrabbers, has really kept a cool distance all along. We'll see if it really lasts. My bet is that it makes its way into the sports games. But may not go beyond the sports games (and/or Battlefield.)
@NEStalgia Here is to hoping that they recapture what they used to be I have some great memories of the non money grubbing EA.
Tap here to load 7 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...