14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts' new CEO, Andrew Wilson, has once again reiterated that the publisher's Star Wars games will not be based on the upcoming movies from Disney, as it wants to apply the same treatment Warner Bros. did with the Batman Arkham titles.
EA surprised quite a lot of gamers last year when it revealed that it had signed an agreement with Disney, the new owner of LucasArts and LucasFilm, to make games based on the Star Wars franchise.
Immediately, the publisher confirmed that a new Star Wars Battlefront was coming from its DICE studio, while other, unannounced projects were also in development.
While talking with Fortune, EA's new CEO, Andrew Wilson, has discussed the new philosophy the large publisher has in regards to its licensed games.
More specifically, Wilson hopes to emulate the successful recipe of the Batman Arkham series, which generated a lot of success for Warner Bros. despite not being based on the recent films or comics.
"What Warner Bros. did with Batman was take the core roots of that IP and manifest that inside the walls of Gotham City and delivered an interactive experience that had real ties to what you would see in the films and what you had read in the comics, while having its own life because it could provide such deep and more immersive storylines," Wilson said.
Wilson has once again emphasized that he doesn’t want to create video game adaptations of the next Star Wars movies coming from Disney, as fans would just feel that the interactive titles are superfluous cash-ins.
"When we look at the Star Wars properties that's how we're looking at it. We're not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film," he added.
Last but not least, Wilson has also emphasized EA's new mantra, which now believes that a great game will attract an audience no matter the platform and that it's important to tell the consumer just how much value is included with each new title.
"Great games work no matter what platform you're on or what business model that you're going with," said Wilson. "If you can provide great entertainment, then you can really get down to that minute-to-minute interaction that's fun and enjoyable and feels like great value."
EA is currently working on quite a lot of new games through its internal studios but also through third-party, independent developers like Respawn Entertainment, which just launched Titanfall.