EA says Apex Legends will ‘expand beyond the traditional battle royale universe’ this year

07.03.2024 - 13:13 / videogameschronicle.com / Respawn Entertainment / Andrew Wilson / Vince Zampella / Battle Royale / Tom Ivan / Royale / Will

Apex Legends players can expect to start seeing the game “expand beyond the traditional battle royale universe” over the coming year as Electronic Arts looks to attract more players to the franchise.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Wednesday, EA CEO Andrew Wilson outlined a plan which he believes can lead to “incredible growth” for Respawn’s live service game, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in February.

Wilson said Apex Legends is one of the most successful new game IP launches of the last 10-15 years, having built a community of “hundreds of millions of players” with an enviable churn rate.

“If you’re thinking about streaming services which are dealing with 40% and 50% churn, we’ve got a core community in Apex that has 75% retention over the course of a five-year period – it’s an incredible franchise,” he said.

“But in the growth of franchises, we do see ebbs and flows, and where we’ve gotten to with Apex, is we’ve got that first cohort of community that have been with us now for five years, and it’s big, it’s large, it’s global and it’s deeply engaged.”

Wilson went on to discuss EA’s strategy for growing the franchise over the next 5-10 years. Initially, this will be focused on making the game more accessible, and after that, more culturally relevant to different markets.

“It’s an incredible game, it’s a core game, it’s not for the faint of heart when you come into it, and that’s part of its charm and part of why people love it,” he said. “But job number one for us is, how do we make that a little more new player friendly? And that’s what you’re starting to see, you’re starting to see it with Season 20, which is really built around how do we drive more acquisition and more engagement.

“And I would say the early signs of that have been very promising. We’re starting to see numbers that are more like the numbers that we’d seen at the peak.”

“Apex Legends: Breakout is the most fluid, fast-paced, and rewarding the game has felt in years by focusing on simplicity and removing as many barriers to shooting other players as possible,” we said of the game’s latest season, which launched in February.

“The next phase will then be, how do we think about more modalities of play, how do you expand beyond the traditional battle royale universe? And we’ll start to see that in the coming year,” Wilson said.

“The third phase will be, how do we really think about broader culturalisation? There are so many markets, particularly in Europe and though Aisa, where we just haven’t broken through yet.

“There’s incredible appetite, there’s an incredible receptiveness towards the IP, and we just haven’t broken through with acquisition, engagement and monetisation yet.

“And so as we think