Assassin's Creed-style "action product" at EA may not release until at least 2020
During its call to investors last night, EA said it has a new IP in the works for 2017 which we will hear about “soon.” It also mentioned an action game which is tentatively slated for fiscal year 2020 or even 2021.
Assassin's Creed-style "action product" at EA may not release until at least 2020
Whether this is the Assassin's Creed-style action title at Motive Studios is working on remains to be seen, but a comment made by CFO Blake Jorgenson seems to suggest as much.
"Today we're building an action genre product that's probably in our fiscal 2020 or 2021, as well as action-oriented games around the Star Wars genre," said Jorgenson. "Most of what we're investing in that's incremental now probably comes in fiscal 2019 and 2020."
In other words, don't expect the game to be released until sometime between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020 - at the least. If slated for fiscal year 2021, it will land between April 1 2020 and March 31, 2021.
In other words, it's three to four years away from release.
The large "Assassin's Creed-style" project was announced in November last year, when former Ubisoft staffer Jade Raymond was named Group GM of the new Montreal studio Motive and Visceral Games.
"We do have a new IP coming next year. We haven't yet announced it, but it's something that you'll see probably coming up soon," Jorgenson continued. "And clearly that's part of our investment for the franchise, as well as continuing building out the Battlefront franchise with Star Wars for fiscal 2018 as well."
The company's 2018 fiscal year starts in April 1, 2017 and ends on March 31, 2018. So we expect a new Battlefield game to be released sometime during calendar 2017.
Last night, EA laid out the release slate for its current fiscal year which ends on March 31, 2017.
During Q1 which ends on June 30, 2016 the only release will be Mirror's Edge Catalyst on June 7. For the second quarter, ending September 30, sports titles Madden 17, NHL 17 and FIFA 17 are on slate.
Just in time for the holidays, Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 will be released - the latter on October 21. Finally, during Q4 FY17, which ends on March 31, 2017, Mass Effect Andromeda and NBA Live 17 will arrive in stores.
Thanks, Seeking Alpha (transcript).