BioWare Could Be Working on an "Action" Game, EA Suggests

Today during EA's Investor Day briefing, the company offered a tease that Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare is expanding beyond role-playing games and could be at work on an "action" title.

A slide from the company's presentation lists BioWare as potentially contributing to EA's growth in the action category. CFO Blake Jorgensen reiterated previous comments, saying the action genre could be lucrative.

In addition to Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare is working on an unannounced new IP, which, if it's an action game, could explain the developer's inclusion on this slide. It could also be that Andromeda has expanded beyond the RPG genre and is now considered an action game, though this is not confirmed.

The other developer listed on the slide under the "action" category is Motive Studios, which is overseeing Dead Space developer Visceral's Star Wars game and making its own new IP. Motive is headed up by Assassin's Creed creator and former executive director Jade Raymond.

Additionally, Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment is working on a third-person action adventure game set in the Star Wars universe.

Also during the briefing, Jorgensen suggested that a single successful action game could bring in as much as $400 million in incremental revenue, with more upside if/when multiple games come to market.

If EA is to make any announcements about its future games lineup, this could come during the company's E3 2016 briefing in June. We will bring you all the news from the show as it's announced.

In October last year, EA said it wanted to expand into the Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed "gigantic action" game genre, a space that it doesn't have much of a presence in. In November of that year, Jorgensen shared a few more details on this project, confirming Raymond, the former Assassin's Creed producer, is heading up one of these games at Motive.

"We've never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that's the action genre," Jorgensen said at the time. "That's the Assassin's Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It's not been an area that we've operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin's Creed franchise for Ubisoft, and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we're building out in Montreal right now. So a lot of excitement around the action genre."

EA's Assassin's Creed-like action game might not come out for a long time, however.

For more on EA's Investor Day briefing, check out the stories below:

• EA Boss Originally Rejected WW1 Battlefield Pitch
• EA Forms New Team to Explore Future Tech, Including Virtual Humans for VR
• EA Explains Why Star Wars: Battlefront Didn't Have Single-Player and Teases Sequel Might
• EA-Published Indie Game Unravel Getting Sequel