The company believes all developers should invest in new intellectual properties

Jul 2, 2012 14:21 GMT  ·  By

Electronic Arts has talked about the over-reliance on franchises in the gaming industry, insisting that it’s a big mistake for publishers to focus only on established brands and neglect the creation of all-new properties.

Electronic Arts had quite a nasty reputation a few years ago as it mostly relied just on sequels to make a profit. Fortunately, the company realized that wasn’t a recipe for success and started introducing quite a few new intellectual properties, some reaching critical acclaim, like Dead Space, while others enjoyed a niche popularity, like Mirror’s Edge.

Now, Patrick Soderlund, the head of EA’s Games label, has talked about the role of sequels and new IPs, emphasizing that an over-reliance on established brands is bound to backfire.

"As game makers, we have to continuously work and launch new intellectual properties into the market," Soderlund told USA Today. "If we think we can live off of our existing brands and that only, I think it will not only be costly, but a short-lived mistake."

While this doesn’t mean that big franchises, like EA’s Battlefield or Need for Speed, should be completely forgotten, Soderlund emphasizes that new IPs should be the driving force for all publishers.

"I still think there's a lot of creative juice in brands like Battlefield and Need for Speed and a bunch of our franchises, but I also do think there's a lot of room for new intellectual properties. We are investing in that today, and you will see new IPs from EA and the Games label in the future."

While EA’s E3 2012 presentation focused on quite a lot of sequels, from FIFA 13 to Medal of Honor: Warfighter or Crysis 3, the publisher said that it was going to reveal plenty of all-new IPs later in the year, like Overstrike, when it could properly showcase them to the world.