EA's Ultimate Team feature, in which players can earn or buy card packs containing players and use them to build teams, has been doing pretty well for the publisher. According to EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, the feature currently brings in $800 million in revenue annually. The feature is so successful, in fact, the publisher may be looking to add it to other, non-sports titles.
Speaking at a Morgan Stanley financial conference, Jorgensen mentioned he saw a "real opportunity" in implementing the mode in games outside of FIFA or Madden, such as the Battlefield or Star Wars Battlefront series. "We spend a lot of time thinking about it," he said. "Not for tomorrow, but over the next couple of years you're going to see a lot more of that in our portfolio."
Though the feature has been enormously successful for EA, it's also been host to a recent wire fraud scandal, in which hackers broke into EA's FIFA Ultimate Team servers to steal coins and sell them for real money to third-party marketplaces.
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]
Our Take
I doubt you'll see the mode in its current version in games like Battlefield or Battlefront, but I can definitely see some version of it making its way into other games eventually. I can't say I'd be a fan.