INTERVIEW: JENS UWE INTAT, ELECTRONIC ARTS
“We have one of the most admired studios in the world, BioWare, making a great product which we feel very confident about.” Where confidence wavers slightly is in regard to the release date. Another much-repeated line from the conference call revealed that there is “an outside chance” of the game slipping to 2012. Intat says: “The reason we’re hesitant is that, even more than with a traditional product, it is crucial we get it completely right at launch because we need people to not just buy the game, but to subscribe to it and commit to it – and to have a great experience from day one. “It’s also very complex to build, including all the back-end infrastructure. And we want to be sure that we can hold to the launch date when we announce it. So we will only do that when we’re comfortable we can.” There are parallels in terms of the
challenge and the ambition, between Star Warsand Battlefield. In both cases EA is a long way behind a
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market-leading brand owned by its fiercest rival Activision Blizzard. In MMOs, it’s World of Warcraft, in the shooter space, it’s Call of Duty. But whilst World of Warcraft is, almost literally, another universe, Call of Dutyis the noisy neighbour. It’s the firm’s No.1 ‘take down’ target. If EA is Ahab, then Call of Dutyis the (heavily armed) whale. Intat is confident that the tide is turning: “With Battlefield 3we have a superior games engine and a top notch product. We are convinced that we will, in fact, have a better product than our key competitor in the space. We think this is the perfect year to gain back market share.”
FPS SUCCESS? Strangely, whilst EA’s core corporate strategy with regard to boxed product is “fewer but bigger”, it hasn’t really applied that to the FPS sector. Battlefieldis just one of several shooter brands the publisher maintains, others include Medalof Honor, Crysis and Bulletstorm. Obviously there are nuances in
Jens Uwe Intat says the MMO space is a different, difficult market for EA to crack but is confident it can with Star Wars: The Old Republic (below)
content and different games will appeal to different gamers, but there’s also a lot of shooting things. So, does this year’s activity and bullishness suggest that Battlefield is the brand? EA’s champion? “It’s our champion this year, yes. But it is true that we have a few more in the genre, so we will see how many different franchises we will continue with in that space.” Pushed on whether that means there may be some sort of brand cull, meaning EA can put all its considerable weight behind fewer products, Intat sticks to the script and simply re-states: “We will see how they develop.” But Battlefieldis surely a notch above the rest, in terms of EA’s priorities, and not just this year. It’s the one that might, one day, match or surpass the sales of Call of Duty. Most pundits would view that as a distant goal and, should it come to pass, an incredible achievement. Intat, however, sees it as inevitable, merely a question of time – the sooner the better, in fact.
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