Electronic Arts just held an earnings call last night to discuss the second fiscal quarter. We learned that EA/Origin Access may come to more platforms than just Xbox One and PC, but they also talked about "live service" games and the now-defunct Visceral Games studio.
It may or may not come as a surprise, but EA's net revenue for the past quarter $959 million, up from $898 last year. Of that, $579 came from digital sales, a majority of which were microtransactions. Comparatively, EA only made $119 million on traditionally packaged games. So what's the brutally honest reason for the closure of Visceral Games and their single-player Star Wars game they were creating? Some might bitterly say greed, but the undeniable answer is money.
Despite this, during the call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson briefly mentioned the closure of Visceral Games. He claims the Star Wars project wasn't canned for being single-player, but because a pivot was needed to "deliver the experience players demanded." This someone supports Xbox's Shannon Loftis' comment about single-player games increasing in cost. Whether Wilson's claim about the reasoning is true or not, he did remark about high ups being "very happy with the assets and content" created by Visceral and that they would likely be reused for a new Star Wars project being developed by EA Vancouver.
This project over at EA Vancouver seems to be the spiritual continuation of Visceral's project rather than an all-new concept. If it's truly a continuation/rework of the other project, will it fit the old description of Visceral's codenamed project Ragtag?
“Ragtag was set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, and was to be a sort of ‘Star Wars Ocean’s Eleven,’ featuring a cast of charming space criminals. The main character was Dodger, a dark version of Han Solo, and he was to be backed by a variety of colorful teammates, each with their own AI and play styles.”
We can only hope so. Visceral's project sounded like what fans of the Star Wars franchise really wanted, but unfortunately, money speaks louder than words for EA.
