Cross-Play Isn't Widely Used, But May Still Come To Games, Says EA

Apex Legends from Respawn surprise-launched this week, and already one of the top-requested features is cross-play between its various platforms. During the Q&A portion of a recent earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson suggested that while their data has found the feature isn't widely used by players, it still plans to utilize it--especially for franchises with big player bases like FIFA.

"We think cross-play and cross-progress is going to be a very important part of our future, and you should anticipate that we'll be doing more in that space," Wilson said. "What our information would suggest to us is that there isn't a tremendous amount of play across devices, but that overall liquidity in any gaming community is a good and positive thing, even if it's only a few people or a small portion of the community that utilizes that.

"We absolutely are looking into that in the context of Apex, and we'll be looking at that across our portfolio over time. We think about franchises with tremendously large communities like FIFA, and we think that they would absolutely benefit from cross-play and cross-progress, as more and more people come into these big communities."

That doesn't sound as if the feature is high on the company's priority list, but it's not ruling it out either. Respawn has hinted that cross-platform play could come to Apex Legends in the future, but it has already ruled out cross-platform progression due to how the basic framework was built.

The EA earnings call also confirmed that in addition to Apex Legends, Respawn has another Titanfall project in the works. We know that it's a "premium game [coming] this year that is a new twist on the Titanfall universe," according to Wilson, and Respawn head Vince Zampella has since confirmed that it isn't a VR game. The earnings call also confirmed a new Need for Speed and Plants vs Zombies are both on the horizon.