EA CEO says the magic words 'Apex 2.0': It won't happen until after the next Battlefield, but 'this will not be the final incarnation of Apex'
EA's latest quarterly financial call saw the execs wearing something of a hairshirt, with CEO Andrew Wilson having to cop to the underwhelming sales of Dragon Age: The Veilguard alongside the «temporary underperformance» of EA Sports FC 25. «Q3 was not the financial performance we wanted or expected,» said Wilson, adding that despite «performing in line with expectations,» net bookings for Respawn's Apex Legends were down year-over-year.
But EA has a plan. «The trajectory of the business of that franchise has not been headed in the direction that we have wanted for some time,» said Wilson (thanks, GIBiz). «We continue to test and develop more and great content for that community. And I would say we have seen some progress in that, but probably not as much as we would have liked.»
In the last earnings call before this one, Wilson himself claimed there were no plans for an Apex 2.0 and pushed back against the idea. Now? It is very much on the cards.
«We do believe there will be a time where we need to do a more meaningful update of Apex as a broad game experience, and the team is diligently working on that. You should imagine we probably wouldn't drop that on top of a Battlefield launch. And so from a timing standpoint, our thinking right now is that that would exist post-Battlefield.»
What EA is calling «the biggest Battlefield ever made» is scheduled to release before April 2026, which to be fair is sooner than many of us were expecting. So you could read between the lines and think Wilson's talking about 2027 or winter 2026 at the very earliest here. As he puts it, EA thinks about Apex in terms of in decades rather than years.
«On a longer-term horizon, these franchises that exist at this level and have this much fan love don't come often,» said Wilson. «What I think we've demonstrated as a company is an ability to build franchises that last 10, 20, 30 years.»
Then, he says the magic words:
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