It has been no secret that Dragon Age and Mass Effect creator BioWare has been working on a new IP. The new game was set to release during EA’s 2018 fiscal year, but has now been pushed back to 2019 fiscal year (April 2018-March 2019).
In the latest EA earnings call EA CEO Andrew Wilson gave reason for the delay.
“We’re very pleased with the progress of our new action IP from BioWare. The Design is stunning. Gameplay mechanics are excellent, and the action will be exhilarating. The game is built around a live service, and through our creative process, we decided to add more to the disruptive new social design for our players. To accommodate that, we are moving the launch date for this project into fiscal year ’19.”
Later in the call Wilson stated “We want to further develop the live service component”.
There isn’t much known about BioWare’s new IP. The only official word came from Aaryn Flynn who said that BioWare was creating a game “that will bring players together in exciting new ways”. Now from this earnings call we know the game will likely have multiplayer and perhaps be multiplayer focused. The “new social design” could be an extension of this multiplayer component. It is also known that the new IP will not be an RPG despite BioWare stating that they wish to “Draw upon 20+ years of development knowledge” and only ever creating two non-RPGs.
