Every year, many of the popular sports games like "NBA," "FIFA," "Madden," and "NHL" get a new installment. Fans always have something to look forward to, eager to check out and try the new graphics and game modes from this year's installment of the game. Sadly, this might no longer be the case in the future.
Electronic Arts (EA), the video game publisher responsible for releasing these sports games, broke the news during an interview with Bloomberg a few days ago. Although nothing is official yet, CEO Andrew Wilson said that it is a thought they are highly considering. Instead of the yearly releases, they are thinking of doing more online updates through subscription services.
"There's a world where it gets easier and easier to move that code around where we may not have to do an annual release," said Wilson, adding, "We can really think about those games as a 365-day, live service."
This code is what translates to the new features of the game. "We do a lot in a FIFA game every year and a lot in a Madden game, and there's a lot of code that we make available as part of the new iterations," Wilson also said.
The plan is to allow fans to subscribe to these regular updates. That said, these sports games would then be more of a story-based game. The updates may likely add more content to its single-player mode like "FIFA 18"'s The Journey or "Madden NFL 18"'s Longshot Mode.
There are parts of the world where their sports games are not as popular everywhere else. This big change would benefit them from these areas, reducing their cost in putting up their games there while still giving newer updates to their loyal fans.
Nevertheless, at this point, fans may just have to wait and see what EA decides for their long-term plans. If fans had a choice, they probably would want to see new games every year rather than just updates.
