If there's any one thing that can define this current generation of gaming (other than particle effects), it's open-world titles. Grand Theft Auto V was just the start: Mad Max, Metal Gear Solid V and Rise of the Tomb Raider all shunned linear gameplay in favor of an open world. It's the benchmark that developers are using to compare themselves to other studios, and considering how well these games are selling, open-world gaming isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Surprisingly, EA is one of the few studios that hasn't tried its hand at a massive, open-world action game...yet.
Recently, EA announced that it had hired ex-Ubisoft producer Jade Raymond to expand on the publisher's catalog. Do to this, EA created Motive Studios, with Raymond at the helm...though the publisher never really confirmed what the team over at Motive was working on. EA hinted at the idea of a game on the same scale as Grand Theft Auto, though any actual details were scarce.
Now, thanks to EA CFO Blake Jorgensen at the UBS Technology Conference yesterday (via GameInformer), fans have a better idea of what Motive Studios is working on - and, given Raymond's pedigree, it's not all that surprising.
"We've never really operated in the largest genre of gaming. That's the action genre. That's the Assassin's Creed style of games, more open world, more single play versus multiplayer....We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin's Creed series for Ubisoft. She's going to be building an action genre for us."
Clearly, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series is a source of inspiration for EA, but there's really no telling what that inspiration means quite yet. At first glance, it sounds like EA wants to create its own version of a free-running open-world action-adventure game, and it makes sense that they'd want to break into a genre that's done so well for Ubisoft - though it's far from a confirmation.
It'll be interesting to see which direction EA heads, and how much of Ubisoft's yearly Assassin's Creed model they try to emulate. Considering Motive is a brand new studio, it'd be a bit much to expect yearly open-world titles from the team...but, with a company as big as EA, it wouldn't be all that surprising either.
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