EA CEO Andrew Wilson was present at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference where he spoke about the company’s plans with their live service, battle royale game, Apex Legends. Moreover, the CEO also spoke at length about the benefits of AI and how it has been helping the company.
EA CEO talks about the future of Apex Legends
According to a report by VGC, Wilson first talked about Apex Legends’ success and how they have managed to create a community of “hundreds of millions of players”. He also spoke about how the game has managed to maintain this success over time and has a “75% retention rate over the course of a five year period”.
Wilson then spoke about how the game is “incredible” and “not for the faint of heart” which is a ‘part of its charm’ and also the reason why players love it. However, their priority now is to make the game more friendly for the “new player”. Which is why players would notice the latest season, as they are “seeing numbers” during this season that come close to game’s peak. Wilson called Apex Legends: Breakout “the most fluid, fast-paced, and rewarding the game has felt in years”.
Wilson then went on to speak about the next phase of Apex Legends’ future, which is “how do you expand beyond the traditional battle royale universe?” This is something everybody would like to see, and Wilson said that we will witness the next phase of the game in the coming year. The last phase of this plan would be “broader culturalisation”, highlighting the European and Asian regions as untapped markets for them.
EA CEO talks about the benefits of AI
According to a report by GameSpot, Wilson at the same conference spoke about the advantages of AI. He revealed that EA has been “embracing” generative AI “deeply” and through its use they want the company to become more efficient in its development phase. According to their internal study, “60% of the development processes have a high feasibility” of having benefits from the use of generative AI. Wilson added that AI will help “get to greatness much more quickly”, by making the process “30% more efficient”.
Moreover, he also spoke about how AI can be beneficial in terms of monetisation, stating that players could be provided with more “personalised” and “bespoke” content that they would be more willing to purchase. He also added that the inclusion of AI will help get them 10-20% more revenue from microtransactions. Wilson concluded by stating that AI is still in its “early days” but EA is “more excited” than before.
