EA says all its games are developed for high-end PCs first


Image: PC Advisor

There is common notion that PC only gets average ports of bigger console targeted titles. However, Blake Jorgensen, CFO at Electronic Arts says that things are quite different at his company.

Jorgensen voiced his thoughts on this matter while speaking at the UBS Global Technology Conference. He said that EA always aims for the highest spec PC and then scales back for consoles.

Image: Financial Post
Image: Financial Post

This topic came up when there was a discussion about the flexibility of the company in terms of console cycles. EA has moved all their games to the Frostbite Engine of late. So, if any big update is needed, it should be done for only one engine.

Jorgensen also mentioned that both Sony and Microsoft are having iterative hardware updates. The backward compatibility feature also makes investing in the games a bit less risky.

This means that the publishers doesn’t need invest in new technology more often if they make games for the best hardware available. This definitely adds to the profit margins of the company.

Battlefield 11

“You won’t see much margin upgrade at all,” he said. “We build all of our games to the highest possible spec, which is typically a high-powered PC, and as the consoles come in, [which] may not be the highest spec, we may actually dummy down the console product to meet the spec of the console. In a world where the console looks more and more like a PC, that’s good for us.”

This is definitely a good news for all of us and since Battlefield 1 is going on smoothly, we have no complaints at all.