During a conference call with investors after releasing their quarterly financials, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson revealed some future plans for one of their most popular releases. Respawn’s Apex Legends continues to grow in popularity, with Season 3 outperforming the previous season by every measure. With that success and the upcoming release of Season 4, Wilson confirmed that the battle royale would be hitting new platforms and new regions in 2020.
Electronic Arts:
Apex Legends Season 3 was "bigger" than Season 2.
Plans for new platforms this year..
(Mobile?) pic.twitter.com/4czfIdyr20
— Dom (@DomsPlaying) January 30, 2020
As fast as platforms go, we aren’t exactly sure where the game will head, but we can make a few educated guesses. With the massive sales success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order helped along on PC by its Steam release, we can likely expect Apex Legends to bolster Valve’s free to play ranks later this year. We should also expect Apex to be a prime candidate to launch with new versions on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 when those systems debut this holiday.
One platform that’s possible but less for sure is mobile. Current genre leader Fortnite thrives on smartphones, but other games have had trouble replicating that success. Games like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds choose to release mobile-exclusive versions with parallel but different feature sets that sidestep replicating a full-fledged PC experience on the go. It’s likely that EA will run into those same hurdles, but they’re big enough that they could overcome and surprise everyone.
Even less for sure is everyone’s handheld console of choice, the Nintendo Switch. EA has not been prolific on the platform, only releasing select smaller games when it suits them. However, the tides may be turning on that front. During the call, Andrew Wilson noted that their Switch releases were doing extremely well and that their players love the platform. He explicitly mentioned that Switch is a platform they want to target more in the future, and that could mean King’s Canyon on the go.
As for regional launches, Wilson confirmed that Apex Legends would come to China this year. With the launch of the Apex Legends Global Series and other esports initiatives, it only makes sense to hit one of the most rapidly developing markets in the world. There’s no solid release date for its Chinese debut, likely due to the difficult nature of predicting when any game will hit Chinese shelves. Each new release needs approval by China’s State Administration of Press and Publication, a government organization that has say over any media coming into the country.
