Despite the rough 2017 Electronic Arts (EA) had in the gaming community, the game publisher still stands by its decisions and has justified its choices for its recent video games.
The video games in question are EA's three best AAA titles released last year, namely "Mass Effect: Andromeda," which was criticized for its glitches and lack of polish, "Star Wars Battlefront II" and "Need for Speed: Payback," which are both a hot mess of microtransaction blunder. The said titles were supposed to be a prestige lever for the already reputable EA but they turned out to be the publisher's weakest offerings last year.
Because of this, EA CEO Andrew Wilson thought it necessary to explain that these shortcomings were not as bad as people assumed. He also convinced investors that things are just fine in EA, given the resonating success of "Battlefield 1," which was released in late 2016. The online player engagement for this first-person shooter (FPS) game ensured a healthy stream of revenue for EA in 2017.
Another game that might have been a silver lining for EA was 2014's "The Sims 4," which had several expansions released in 2017 and has continued to do well despite its age. Wilson also reminded the community that EA, despite a disappointing 2017 lineup, still had an impressive portfolio and has continued to thrive.
"So as I take a 50,000-foot view and look at the breadth and depth of our portfolio across all of the games we make — and if you look at 2017 in aggregate we were the highest-reviewed publisher across our entire portfolio — so there's a lot of real goodness there," stated Wilson. With that in mind, the EA executive also claimed that the company is not perfect and will still continue to learn from its mistakes. He did not talk about any of EA's plans for the future, but it is obvious that EA and Wilson are optimistic about the next few years of their development cycle for their future titles such as "Anthem" and "Dragon Age 4."
