EA Sports has a particular way of doing things, and sticking to an annual release schedule for their games lineup is a big one. For decades, a new Madden appears on store shelves every August. It’s followed by updated NHL and FIFA games a month later, and the latest NBA Live (when it’s not on the bench) typically launches in October. But things might be changing for the venerable publisher.
Speaking to Bloomberg, CEO Andrew Wilson said that EA Sports might discontinue yearly releases and switch to offering downloadable expansions or subscriptions instead:
“There’s a few different things that have got to happen first. We do a lot in a FIFA game every year, and a lot in a Madden game. There’s a lot of code that we make available as part of the new iteration. But when we look at what we do in Korea or China, we don’t do it that way. There, every four years we release a new big code drop, and we offer incremental change over time.”
Wilson didn’t lay out a road map for how this change might be implemented, but I’m sure many sports fans would be interested in purchasing a full-priced game once and adding to it with roster updates and Story Mode expansions in future seasons.
