Yesterday was not exactly a good day for Electronic Arts. The company behind the FIFA saga yesterday made a series of announcements related to several of its IPs that have not gone down well with its fans. The announcements were made after the presentation of the results of the third fiscal quarter, ended last December 31, which also details the company’s future plans.
On the one hand, EA communicated through several of its channels that it is delaying the release of the expected Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to April 28 this year. The sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was initially going to be released on March 17, but will be delayed a month in order to polish the game.
Respawn, the studio behind the upcoming Star Wars video game, detailed the following in their statement, “In order for the team to meet Respawn’s standard of quality, provide the team with the time they need, and achieve the level of polish our fans deserve, we have added six crucial weeks to our launch schedule.”
Delays in video game releases are becoming an industry standard, with production schedules becoming increasingly lengthy, complex and costly. Still, there are cases and cases. While games such as Cyberpunk 2077 or the upcoming Skull and Bones delayed their release dates on several occasions due to alleged problems in development, both Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Elden Ring, which was released a year ago, have needed just one month more in order to fix bugs.
But the bad news does not end there, because yesterday, with little time between one announcement and another, EA also communicated that it cancels two of its mobile video games: Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile. For the same reason, the company also closes the developer studio of the mobile war video game: Industrial Toys, which it bought in 2018.
In the case of Apex Legends Mobile, Respawn cites in its statement the poor quality of the updates released to date. “After months of work with our development partner, we have made a mutual decision to end our mobile game. While disappointing, we are proud of the game we released, grateful for the support of the Apex Legends community, and confident that this is the right decision for players,” the studio says.
Regarding Battlefield Mobile, EA would be trying to do something similar to Activision with its Call of Duty saga, and would like to unify the fan bases of the different Battlefield games in the long term. A change in strategy and in the vision of the Battlefield brand in which the mobile game would not quite fit, according to EA, although the cancellation does not rule out future games of the franchise on this platform: “We are evaluating how mobile fits into our strategy, more on that shortly.”
