During Electronic Arts Play 2020 event, Respawn, the maker of popular battle royale Apex legends, has announced that Apex Legends is getting cross-play support. Not only that, but Respawn is now launching Apex Legends on Steam and Nintendo Switch platforms so the cross-play can be bigger than ever. Now, players that use either PC (Steam or EA Origin), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, can be brought together and play against each other. However, Respawn didn't just announce the cross-play support. Along with it, they have announced a new seasonal event called the "Lost Treasures Collection". In this event, players get a new game mode called "Armed and Dangerous Evolved". This game mode allows for new player abilities and resurrection of knocked out players. You can find more about it in the video below.

Calling all pilots! Electronic Arts Inc., Motive Studios and Lucasfilm today announced Star Wars : Squadrons, an immersive, first-person space dogfighting experience set in the beloved Star Wars galaxy. Star Wars: Squadrons will feature thrilling 5v5 multiplayer dogfights, monumental fleet battles, and an original story set during the final days of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the New Republic after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The game will launch October 2, 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC via Origin, Steam and the Epic Games Store, and will be playable via Virtual Reality (VR) on PlayStation 4 and PC with cross-play support. Tune into EA Play Live on June 18 at 4:00pm PT for the gameplay reveal of Star Wars:Squadrons.

Update Jun 18th: EA has confirmed that the game will fully support joysticks and HOTAS joysticks. They have also published the minimum and recommended system requirements which can be viewed down below.

Players can experience modern day warfare in Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 or the WWI and WWII battles of the past in Battlefield 1 and Battlefield V respectively. Players can also fight for humanity as Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3 or visit new worlds as Sara or Scott Ryder in Mass Effect Andromeda. In addition, players can play as iconic Star Wars characters and with the incredible Star Wars vehicles in Star Wars Battlefront I and Star Wars Battlefront II.

Last Friday, the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection was the second new EA game to launch on Steam to great success, reaching the top game globally on Steam best-selling charts during its launch weekend. Last weekend, EA games also had five games appear in the top 10 of the Steam best-selling charts with their first wave of titles released on Steam last Thursday, giving players the opportunity to explore the fantastical worlds of the BioWare award-winning Role-Playing Games - Dragon Age : Inquisition and Dragon Age II and experience high-speed, white-knuckle driving action in Need for Speed Heat, Need for Speed: Rivals and Need for Speed (2016). Players can also battle it out in the wacky, fun and over-the-top shooter, Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, or play from a selection of the bold and innovative games from EA's indie development partners like Unravel, Unravel II, Fe and Sea of Solitude.

In response to the ongoing digitization of events that has been put on an accelerated course due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Summer Game Fest aims to keep the gaming scene fresh with announcements and developer deep-dives. The aim is to bring the world up to speed in game announcements and development amidst cancelled floor-like shows such as GAMESCOM and E3, and the event lasts from May through September. One of the recent announcements in the lineup for the Summer Game Fest is none other than the most awaited game of 2020 (and probably the last decade) in the form of Cyberpunk 2077.. Developer CD Projekt Red has announced a special Cyberpunk 2077 continued revel event which it's calling "Night City Wire", which will take place in a TBD hour on June 11th. Expect new trailers for the game, likely a played mission showcasing the games' systems, and a developer dive into the creation of Night City.

That same day, EA will be running their "EA Play Live 2020" event, which aims to bring new game announcements and extended information on already-announced games. According to the company, "EA Play Live 2020 is about connecting players around the world and bringing them closer to the game franchises they love. During this year's digital event, we'll showcase our games through a live broadcast, community content, and more." The EA Play show runs on June 11th as well, from 4pm PST on June 11. It surely won't coincide with CD Projekt Red's deep dive into Cyberpunk 2077.

EA has confirmed that it's existing games for Xbox One and Playstation 4 will receive free patches to upgrade them for next-generation consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series X both feature ways to play current-generation games, both consoles will attempt to automatically boost games up to 4k resolution. While these options ensure broad inter-generation compatibility issues can arise from game limitations, this is where manual patches come in allowing developers to take advantage of the extra performance and radically overhaul their games.

Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen confirmed in a recent earnings call that EA would not charge consumers for these patches. "As usual, we have presented the quarterly phasing of our net bookings in our earnings presentation. Note that this year, the phasing includes the effect of revenue recognition from the games we are launching for the current generation of consoles that can also be upgraded free for the next generation."

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced preliminary financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year ended March 31, 2020. "We're humbled to see people around the world connecting through our games during this unprecedented period," said CEO Andrew Wilson. "Our focus continues to be on everything we can do for our people, our players, and our communities. Thanks to the amazing dedication and determination of our teams at Electronic Arts, we're able to deliver the games, experiences and content choices that our players are looking for during this challenging time."

"We've had a strong year. Our results this quarter prove the value of the live services path we've been on now for a decade. The breadth and depth of our live services give the flexibility we need at times like this to meet player needs," said COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen. "I want to thank everyone at EA for rising to the challenge. People across the company have shown extraordinary innovation, energy and ingenuity. Learnings from this period will forever change the way we work at EA."

During Microsoft's Q3 2020FY Earnings call, it was confirmed that Xbox Live was seeing record levels of engagement with over 90 million monthly users. On top of this, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass had surpassed 10 million subscribers for the video game subscription service. Xbox Game Pass is available for Xbox One and PC giving users access to a library with hundreds of games including many large recent games such as Gears Tactics, Halo Master Chief Collection, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This makes Xbox Game Pass the largest game subscription service far outnumbering EA Access and Origin Access. Microsoft also noted that interest in Project xCloud the experimental game streaming service was high with "hundreds of thousands" of active users.

Google Stadia has unveiled several new games and changes coming to the platform in a recent Stadia Connect Event. Google Stadia will be adding 11 new games to the platform, along with updates for Stadia Pro subscribers. The Pioneer Edition of PUBG will be free for Stadia Pro subscribers and $39.99 USD for other users. Stadia also announced that EA would be joining the platform with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order coming this fall, along with Madden NFL & FIFA coming this winter. Stadia will also be launching some various other new games such as Crayta, Get Packed, Wave Break, Embr, Zombie Army 4: Dead War, The Turing Test, and SteamWorld Heist in the coming weeks.

We have previously reported on the possibility of release of the new Crysis game in the form of a remaster of an older game, meaning that developers from EA and Crytek took an exiting game and updated its engine to support a few of the modern and graphics accessories like ray tracing and 4K textures. However, it seems that that report wasn't just a rumor and Crytek/EA collaboration is indeed reading a new Crysis Remastered game. The official Crysis website was showing a picture of the remastered game along with platforms it will be supported on. When going to a Cookie Policy part of the website, one could easily see a part of the website meant to showcase the Crysis Remastered game. It was taken down just a few moments ago, however, thanks to the Twitter user Metalfy (@Metalfy4) there is a video showing how easy it was to get to the website.

Showcasing the game, the website was showing that the game is going to be supported on a number of platforms like the regular PC, PS4, Xbox One, and perhaps the most interesting one - the Nintendo Switch. One person on r/Crysis found the following quote on the website: "From the makers of Far Cry, Hunt: Showdown and CRYENGINE, Crysis offers the first-person shooter fans the best-looking, evolved, and innovative gameplay, enabling players to adapt in real-time to survive. Crysis Remastered brings new graphic features, high-quality textures, and the CRYENGINE's native hardware- and API-agnostic ray tracing solution for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and - for the very first time - Nintendo Switch." Seeing this, it will be interesting to see how the Crytek plans to pull off the Nintendo Switch port, being that it has relatively weak hardware. Nonetheless, question remains which version of Crysis game will be remastered and when the game will actually launch.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the ratification and public release of the Vulkan Ray Tracing provisional extensions, creating the industry's first open, cross-vendor, cross-platform standard for ray tracing acceleration. Primarily focused on meeting desktop market demand for both real-time and offline rendering, the release of Vulkan Ray Tracing as provisional extensions enables the developer community to provide feedback before the specifications are finalized. Comments and feedback will be collected through the Vulkan GitHub Issues Tracker and Khronos Developer Slack. Developers are also encouraged to share comments with their preferred hardware vendors. The specifications are available today on the Vulkan Registry.

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that realistically simulates how light rays intersect and interact with scene geometry, materials, and light sources to generate photorealistic imagery. It is widely used for film and other production rendering and is beginning to be practical for real-time applications and games. Vulkan Ray Tracing seamlessly integrates a coherent ray tracing framework into the Vulkan API, enabling a flexible merging of rasterization and ray tracing acceleration. Vulkan Ray Tracing is designed to be hardware agnostic and so can be accelerated on both existing GPU compute and dedicated ray tracing cores if available.

There has always been something to be said about single-player experiences - most players just seem to prefer a strong single-player game to full-on multiplayer games. EA, LucasArts and Respawn Entertainment have now come out of the woodwork regarding the latest Star Wars release in the form of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen order, and it seems the game is shipping in no small amounts worldwide. The partners announced that this game has cemented itself as the fastest-selling digital launch for a Star Wars game in its first two weeks. And concurrently, EA has said this is the fastest selling PC-game for the company (in all distribution formats) in these same two weeks.

Of course, one needs to remember that fastest, highest-selling doesn't automatically make the game the most grossing Star Wars release. It's likely that Star Wars games with a more multiplayer-focused DNA (such as Battlefront I and Battlefront II from DICE) will gross more in their lifetime than Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order ever will. That said, it goes to show what an original storytelling experience set in a beloved franchise can achieve. Read on after the break for the comments from all developing parties.

Kerry Hopkins, EA's VP of Legal and Government affairs (and yes, apparently that's an actual position within EA) said before a UK parliament session that loot boxes in video games are surprise mechanics that aren't any different from Kinder eggs or from any other "Surprise!" factor product. AS Hopkins put it, lootboxes are also very fun and very ethical experiences in the way EA has implemented them: "We do think the way that we have implemented these kinds of mechanics - and FIFA of course is our big one, our FIFA Ultimate Team and our packs - is actually quite ethical and quite fun, quite enjoyable to people". Never mind that a government-commissioned study on the matter, "Young People and Gambling 2018 Report" claiming that 450,000 UK kids, aged between 11 and 16, bet regularly.

Hopkins explained further saying that "We do agree with the UK gambling commission, the Australian gambling commission, and many other gambling commissions that they aren't gambling, and we also disagree that there's evidence that shows it leads to gambling. Instead we think it's like many other products that people enjoy in a healthy way, and like the element of surprise." I'm sorry about the meme, but I just had to do it. But I feel tempted to circle back to the job position for VP of Legal and Government Affairs... I mean doesn't that just sound like something an evil company would have?

Today, Electronic Arts Inc. announced that it is bringing EA Access to the PlayStation 4 (PS4 ) system. Starting this July, players can sign-up for a monthly subscription (MSRP $4.99), or an annual subscription (MSRP $29.99) through PlayStation Store. With the addition of the PlayStation 4 console to the already existing membership services on Xbox One and PC via Origin , EA now offers its subscription services on more platforms than any other publisher.

As we continue to invest in digital and subscription services, bringing great games to even more players across more platforms is an exciting opportunity for everyone," said Matt Bilbey, Executive VP of Strategic Growth. "Our goal is to give players more choice to try and play our games wherever and however they choose, and we're happy to bring EA Access to PlayStation 4."

Apex Legends was somewhat of a sleeper hit, and it was so in many ways. A ninja introduction by EA of the Respawn Entertainment-developed game back in January saw significant interest from the gaming community, who recognized in Respawn the ability to make a great FPS. Taking advantage of the Battle Royale popularity was also a solid move, as was EA's decision to focus marketing efforts not on a long, drawn-out publicity campaign, but instead, on paying renowned Twitch streamers to play and stream their game.

Since gaming (at least when it comes to multiplayer gaming) nowadays has somewhat of a "monkey see, monkey do" dynamic for the general gaming population, this move prompted Apex Legends to the top of the streaming food chain, with a grand total of 40 million hours streamed on its first week alone. Also during its first week, the game achieved a staggering 25 million unique players, doubling that number to 50 million in the first month. However, the cash flow must die out, and as EA stopped paying streamers, so did they move on to other, more proficuous games, such as Fortnite, which has endured the Apex Legends assault in terms of viewers and players. It remains to be seen if EA will double down on the streamer investment it did on the games' launch, or if Respawn Entertainment can churn out meaningful updates and characters that can turn the tide.

We knew it was coming, and were patiently waiting for more news on a new IP from Electronic Arts based on the Star Wars license they have.. not made the best use of to date. Handed to developers Respawn Entertainment, who are on a high from Apex Legends and have shown how to create a new IP franchise for single- and mult-player gaming with Titanfall, the new single-player focused game is titled Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Respawn and EA shared more details on the game yesterday as part of the Star Wars celebration event in Chicago, and let us know that the central character is a Jedi padawan, Cal Kestis, who survived Order 66 and the destruction of most of the Jedi order.

Cal Kestis turns to scavenging on the planet Braka while hiding from the Sith empire, in a move that will no doubt draw comparisons to Disney's new numbered film trilogy. With merchandise no doubt a factor, we will also see a new droid companion called BD-1, as seen in the images below. Given the nature of the protagonist being a padawan trainee, there will also be a Jedi knight who will accompany the player as a mentor. Combat will involve strategy, as per Respawn, with the player needing to employ abilities and spatial movement to make the most of the situation. Enemy units will include the Purge Troopers, a melee-focused variant of the Storm Troopers, who have already appeared in the Star Wars Extended Universe before as specialized units dedicated to hunting down survivors of Order 66. EA and Respawn were both quick to reveal this will be a single-player only game with no microtransactions, and the game releases on PC and consoles on November 15, 2019. While we wait for more details, no doubt coming near E3 or closer to debut, here's a reveal trailer to hold you till then.

It would be a safe bet to admit that Electronic Arts (EA) has not had the best 12, or even 24, months as a publisher. While their sports division continues to thrive, it may well be the one business unit holding down the fort. Their use of the Star Wars license has been dubious at best when it comes to execution, with reports on cancelled games and Battlefront II (the new one) not meeting expectations. Battlefield V has also not lit the field on fire, unless you are playing the new Firestorm battle royal mode in a literal sense, and the less said about Anthem the better. Apex Legends was introduced to much fanfare at launch, but the recent battle pass has soured many on the future of this new IP.

Perhaps it was a matter of when, rather than if, that the company would find a personnel restructure to be in order, and today just happened to be the day. EA CEO Andrew Wilson helped put out a statement on their website, recognizing a challenging world ahead and that they are "making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs" of players. These moves and changes involve letting go of as many as 350 people (out of 9000 total, or around 4%) unfortunately, most of whom are on their publicity and marketing departments, while also toning down their presence in Japan and Russia. We here at TechPowerUp are always saddened to hear such news, and take solace in knowing that EA is helping the laid-off personnel find new employment opportunities.

Respawn Entertainment and EA are both celebrating the first month of Apex Legend's release with a short video, commemorating the fact that some 50 million unique players have already logged in and played the game in some form. Apex Legends, which launched after an uber secretive development over at Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment, was released just last month, managing to become a sleeper hit for EA as it surpassed 10 million unique players and 1 million concurrent players in just three days after release, more than doubling those numbers in the second week of its release. The game is, for all intents and purposes, a hit among gamers, and is sure to be bringing a steady revenue stream to EA's bottom line.

If you've been clamoring, silently or not so silently, for a new story-driven Star Wars game, you're in luck. The Respawn-developed Star Wars game Jedi: Fallen Order is set for a reveal on April 13th. That doesn't mean the game is launching anywhere close to that slice of time, mind you; it's likely EA is just starting up the hype machine for the game, as it usually does. A fall release is expected, nonetheless, which means that Respawn was working in two very disparate game experiences a the same time - this really should speak to that studios' ingenuity.

Respawn has wrapped up their silent, ninja-like development of Apex Legends to a full game release, and is on cruise mode when it comes to the games' support. Provided they keep adding features - and raking in the money from all that hard work in what has quickly become one of the video game hits of recent times - the company's efforts can now certainly be focused solely on the Star Wars story-driven game. The announcement came straight from EA's Star Wars Twitter account, and the reveal is set for the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Some tidbits about the games' setting are delivered, such as that you're a "Padawan who survives Order 66" and you explore "the universe in a time after the fall of the Jedi Order". Whether "exploring the universe" is overly enthusiastic jargon for an on-rails experience or code for a somewhat emergent/open world game system remains to be seen, but it's Star Wars. The budget is big, and Respawn has developed great games.

Anthem is out in the wilds, and it seems its reception has been mixed - it's definitely not the blockbuster, review-parading title that any developer - and publisher - would like their games to be. Reports peg Anthem's boxed game sales as half that of Bioware's previous Mass Effect: Andromeda - which was, again, half those of Mass Effect 3. Perhaps it's a tale of gamers taking a step back in trust regarding Bioware's ability to deliver, following Andromeda's reception, perhaps it has been superseded in interest by multiplayer-focused games (as we've seen, the industry trend has gone on towards having competitive multiplayer, instead of cooperative multiplayer designs). Whatever the reason, Anthem seems to have been met will a less-than-expected interest when it comes to sales - the opening weekend sales were lower than both Kingdom Hearts 3 and Resident Evil 2. And the PC version of the game has been ill-received by critics and gamers alike, if Metacritic still holds weight in this review-bombing world.

That said, EA is committing to content drops for the game - until May 2019, that is. This in itself sets a mild alarm ringing - this can't possibly represent publisher's investment in the game - three months is a very unimpressive commitment to the longevity of a game universe in the scale of Anthem. So many plans for the game to usher in the "games as a platform" concept of regular content drops, I'd be dumbstruck to find that EA might consider dropping the money bag like this.

"Apex Legends," developed by Respawn Entertainment, and published by EA, has become the fastest growing online battle-royale shooter, with its popularity snowballing to over 25 million players in just the first week since launch. The game made a splash into the crowded online battle-royale genre that's dominated by "Fortnite" and "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" aka PUBG, among dozens of knockoffs from independent developers. Apex Legends is being appreciated by players for having a polished, well-tested presentation, slick gameplay, reasonable eye-candy, low "pay-to-win" perception among players, good performance on entry-level and mainstream graphics hardware, and offering many of the inventory-management, gameplay, and teamplaying features felt lacking in other titles. The game is free-to-play, distributed through Origin.

Neil Blomkamp is one of today's most well-regarded sci-fi filmmakers - and for good reason. While you may know him for his feature-length films (such as the legendary District 9 and the even more legendary, for me, Elysium), he has been making forays into conceptual filmmaking ever since he set up Oats Studios. The goal for Oats Studios was to create cinematographic thought-experiments with a sci-fi twist, and the studios have released a number of great works that you can follow on their YouTube (such as Zygote, Firebase, and Rakka), even going so far as to fully experiment with the power of Unity in the making of some seriously impressive pieces in their Adam series. If you don't know the studio's work yet, do yourself a favor and take a look.

That said, EA and Bioware have clearly picked up on the potential for Oats Studios, and ordered a cinematic, live-action story set on the Anthem universe. Named Conviction, the short serves as a teaser for the games' release, and showcases the impressive world of Anthem being brought to life with real people and settings. I won't dive into much detail here; I've given you the background. Suffice it to say that I am left even more wanting in regards to Neil Blomkamp's canceled Halo project after watching this. I bet you'd love to see something such as this brought to life in more detail and depth than a short three minutes and forty-five seconds allow for.

So, this is kind of a strange, time-traveling move on EA (and Bioware's) part: a launch trailer that jumps the gun on the actual game by almost two weeks. So, granted, it isn't really two weeks - it's a ten-day period between today and Anthem's February 22nd launch. That said, there really are some more days left on the calendar - the launch trailer seems slightly premature.

Perhaps this is EA's way of keeping interest in Anthem and recapturing some of that original hype. With the game's demo being plagued by stability and server issues during the initial period, and the game's demo itself receiving a more lukewarm than not response from critics and the (more outspoken) community, it seems that interest in this Destiny killer has waned in recent times. Which really could be bad news, considering EA's history, and Bioware's last title, Mass Effect: Andromeda's, fate. There's also the possibility that the recent launch of EA's own sleeper-hit Apex Legends - which has recently garnered some 10 million unique players in four days since its inception. Perhaps the thunder is being stolen out of Anthem's feet with a series of unfortunate circumstances - not incidents. It remains to be seen. For now, instead of spelling doom left and right, just watch the small but cool Anthem launch trailer. Let's hope the story holds... For a game with no PvP, let's just hope the story holds.

EA stocks today have taken a dive of 12.83% (17% at the worst case scenario, with a slight rebound in the meantime), at the moment of writing, compared to their opening hours. The descent, which represents a dip towards a $80.61 valuation per share compared to the $92.52 at the opening market, followed the release of the company's Q3 FY19 Financial Results, caused by lower than expected sales from Battlefield V and lower than expected revenue from EA's mobile efforts. This is capitalism at its finest - the 7.3 million sales of Battlefield V (an impressive number by any metric) fell close to a cool million short of projected sales by this time, and that is enough for the market to correct their expectations.

EA's mobile business saw a YoY fall of 22%, which did little to assuage investors and provide a positive note for the underperforming Battlefield V. It's interesting to note how interesting the markets can be: on the surprise announcement of the new, Respawn-developed Apex Legends, there was no significant change in EA's stock valuation, despite this launch meaning a new, hopefully rich, revenue source for the publisher. Although considering TechPowerUp's overall sentiment regarding that games' launch (not representative of the entire community), it seems that EA won't be banking much on our users.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced preliminary financial results for its third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2018. "The video game industry continues to grow through a year of intense competition and transformational change," said CEO Andrew Wilson. "Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations. We are now applying the strengths of our company to sharpen our execution and focus on delivering great new games and long-term live services for our players. We're very excited about Apex Legends, the upcoming launch of Anthem, and a deep line-up of new experiences that we'll bring to our global communities next fiscal year."

"FIFA stands out as a robust franchise through a tumultuous year in the video game industry," said COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen. "Elsewhere in the business, we're making adjustments to improve execution and we're refocusing R&D. Looking forward, we're delighted to launch Anthem, our new IP, to grow Apex Legends and related Titanfall experiences, to deliver new Plants vs. Zombies and Need for Speed titles, and to add Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to our sports titles in the fall."

The launch of Respawn's Apex Legends must've caught most of the consumer base (and even much of the industry) by surprise. A silent entry into the gaming world, published by EA? Color us all surprised. The new game, which has roots on Respawn's Titanfall IP, is a free-to-play Battle Royale game that does away with Titanfall's mechs in order to sustain up to 60 players in a match, made up of 20 teams of three players. Each "Legend", as in, playable character, has unique powers, strengths and weaknesses, and a number of them have roles that complement each other.

The game was teased and announced in a record 8 hours or so, and that announcement saw the game being subsequently downloaded and played by more than 1 million unique users, all vying for a try of the next battle royale fix. While those are great numbers (the game being a free-to-play affair helped, of course), and while Respawn's Vince Zampella glowed as he shared the news on Twitter, the development of Apex Legends comes with its own piece of sad news: no, there was no Titanfall 3 in development at Respawn. For now, EA is betting hard on Apex Legends as the ongoing work for Respawn (and cash cow for microtransactions), but who knows? Maybe one day, we'll see the game introduce Titanfall's Titans in a world-breaking update. Warframe has certainly done some such metamorphic changes since its inception.