The rocky launch of Anthem feels like it has not fully rallied yet, after the roadmap has been delayed and come out to less than stellar responses. This was punctuated by the game’s outright absence at E3, as Electronic Arts seemingly had no update for a dwindling fanbase hungry to find out more about the game’s now-adjusted path. One might think that means EA is running away from the Bioware-developed game, but CEO Andrew Wilson is insisting that’s not the case.
In an interview with GamesDaily, Wilson believed that they kind of whiffed the game’s debut, but thinks it is a long-term title that has plenty of time to pull up.
“IP lives for generations, and runs in these seven to ten year cycles,” Wilson told GameDaily. “So, if I think about Anthem on a seven to ten year cycle, it may not have had the start that many of us wanted, including our players. I feel like that team is really going to get there with something special and something great, because they’ve demonstrated that they can.”
Bioware Montreal has seemingly ceded a lot of control over Anthem toward Bioware Austin, though has recommitted to the game all the same. For his part, Wilson partially blames the rocky start on a mismatch between Bioware’s reputation and the gameplay of Anthem.
“What the Bioware teams are thinking about is that we’re going to build a lot of different types of games. We’re going to have our core Bioware audience that’s been with us for a really long time,” says Wilson. “There are kids today who are 12 years old who weren’t around when Bioware started making games…and they have different expectations of what a Bioware game should be in the context of the world they’ve grown up in.”
[Source: GamesDaily]