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Electronic Arts Working On Assassin’s Creed-Style Game With Jade Raymond
EA continues to grow its influence across genres, building a stable of studios and wholly owned properties. The acquisition of DICE in 2006 delivered one of the biggest shooters. BioWare in 2007 gave the company solid RPG offerings. PopCap, purchased in 2011, gave EA a foothold in mobile. Most recently though, the publisher has decided to build rather than buy.
The company announced the hire of Jade Raymond, former producer on the Assassin’s Creed series, in July of this year. She’s heading up the new Motive studio, and now we have an idea of what she’s working on (in addition to helping guide Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game).
Speaking at the UBS Technology Conference yesterday, EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen spoke briefly about Raymond’s project. "We’ve never really operated in the largest genre of gaming," he says. "That’s the action genre. That’s the Assassin’s Creed style of games, more open world, more single play versus multiplayer. It’s not been an area we’ve operated in. 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."
While that doesn't mean that Raymond is working on an Assassin's Creed clone, it does indicate that EA has her focusing on open world and single player style of action. This deviates from EA's more traditional focus on connected experiences with deep multiplayer components, like Need for Speed, Battlefield, and the slate of sports games.
Our Take
EA has typically published non-shooter action games from third-party studios. Bringing Raymond in, giving her own studio, and letter her do what she knows is a smart decision. EA has done a solid job of building major IPs that have perennial value. While we might not see whatever this new series is every year (like Ubisoft does with Assassin's Creed), this is a long-term investment in the future.
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