EA on Visceral: had to “cut the bridge when you realize you can’t really make a lot of money on something.”


After what has happened with Star Wars: Battlefront 2, things are not looking well for EA. And things will not get improved in the near future as its chief financial officer, Blake Jorgensen, has made some pretty bold statements. During a presentation at the Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology conference, Jorgensen claimed that EA had to close Visceral because its Star Wars game would not make a lot of money.

As we all know, Visceral’s Star Wars would be a single-player experience. However, and according to Jorgensen, EA would not make a lot of money of it. That’s why Visceral is no more, that’s why EA now wants to find more ways to monetize it and that’s why it will reboot the project. And as per Jorgensen’s own words, EA had to “cut the bridge” when they realized they couldn’t “really make a lot of money on something.

Jorgensen also stated that Visceral’s Star Wars was a very linear game. Not only that, but it would really push gameplay to the next level. And instead of capitalizing on something like that, EA decided to reboot the project so it could better monetize it.

The reason behind this decision? As Jorgensen stated, gamers don’t like linear games as much as they did five or ten years ago. As such, EA had to close Visceral due to economic decisions. Those are Jorgensen’s own words and to be honest, we are not really shocked. After all, we all pretty much knew that EA will not focus anymore on single-player games.

So, things are not looking great for EA at this point. While Disney stepped in and forced the publisher to remove micro-transactions from Battlefront 2, it’s crystal clear EA’s intentions. The publisher will do its best to better monetize its future titles, with any means necessary.

We also really wonder what will now happen to the Titanfall series. A couple of weeks ago, EA announced that it has acquired Respawn. And while the dev team tried to assure fans that things will not change, it’s pretty obvious from EA’s stance that Titanfall 3 will have a better ‘monetization’ system so it can recoup its costs. In other words, get ready for lots of micro-transactions.

Thanks Dualshockers