Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson just revealed their plan of building a metaverse for their suite of sports-themed video games. For him, it’s an ideal way to bring together their community of players and offer them better gaming experiences.
EA Sports CEO Teases Metaverse Plan
According to IGN, the concept of an EA Sports metaverse was suggested by Wilson during a Q&A session in a recent earnings call. He claimed that given the 700 million players their platform hosts, it just makes sense.
Wilson stated that EA Sports often serves as an entry point for Gen Z and Alpha in the world of sports. From there, users spend an average of 90 minutes per session in one of their games. However, they often head to another platform just to share their experiences with friends.
After that, a lot of them tend to move to one more platform outside of their inner circle to generate content based on their gaming performance and experiences. The output is then shared with a wider network of like-minded individuals.
The trend, thus, offers an opportunity to consolidate everything in a single space through the metaverse. Some fans are already calling the realm “Maddenverse,” in reference to EA’s popular American football game series.
“We do believe we have a meaningful opportunity over the coming years to harness the power of that community both inside and outside of our games, which is really the third pillar of our core strategy and will be led by our EA Sports brand,” said Wilson.
Despite the exciting revelation of the EA Sports CEO, he clarified there are no official announcements yet regarding the matter. But then again, he emphasized that the prospect of a metaverse presents “an incredible opportunity.”
“So best I can say is: watch this space,” Wilson remarked in closing.
The Resurgence of the Metaverse
The metaverse was originally envisioned as the next evolution of the Internet. It is a digital replica of our world where people can interact with each other using their avatars. Think of it as the realization of the technology featured in the movie “Ready Player One.”
While there are already projects like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and Second Life that have embraced the concept in their respective game worlds, they’re not reflections of the metaverse’s original design. These, along with other MMOs, only operate within a closed system bordered by their server capacity and are not persistent worlds because they tend to be rolled back to their previous state as the need arises.
Big companies like Meta have been pouring a serious amount of cash develop the metaverse as it was initially conceived. But then again, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) projects has apparently overshadowed these and redirected a lot of investments in their direction.
Generative AI has seemingly hit a roadblock with the technological limitations of our time because it had gotten “a tad too ahead of itself” as some analysts have put it. This instance, hence, presents an opportune time for metaverse projects to shine once more and reclaim their lost spark of interest from investors.
Analytics firm Statista projects the growth of the metaverse market into a $74.4 billion industry this year. It expects the sector to further flourish at an annual growth rate of 37.73% to $507.8 billion by 2030, making it a serious money-making venture for investors who can hop in on the train early.