New Battlefield Game is a “Tremendous Live Service” – EA CEO

Summer Game Fest has announced its first round of partners for this year's event.

Electronic Arts, the publisher everyone loves to hate, isn't doing itself many favours among already-jaded onlookers. The company's CEO, Andrew Wilson, has already talked about implementing generative AI into its development processes, but that same earnings call saw him discuss another contentious idea: in-game ads.

We're getting closer and closer to gaming's annual announcement season. Every summer sees the industry turn out for a few weeks of pre-recorded presentations and live broadcasts, all showcasing what's coming up in the near future. With E3 now sadly a thing of the past, the biggest of these events is now Summer Game Fest, created and hosted by Geoff Keighley. Whatever games you enjoy, it sounds like this will be worth watching — a lot of game developers and publishers are taking part.

NieR director Yoko Taro, NieR series producer Yosuke Saito, and NieR composer Keiichi Okabe are all working on a new game together, it's been confirmed, but nobody's willing to say whether the project is actually a NieR title yet. Speaking to Famitsu, Saito teased: «I'll have something a bit more put-together to say in the not-too-distant future, so please stay tuned. It might be NieR, it might not be NieR. (Laughs.)»

Geoff Keighley has revealed next month's Summer Game Fest live show will host the reveal of a new entry in one of 2K's «biggest and most beloved franchises». Given today's newly revealed sales milestones, the most likely options appear to be BioShock (43 million), Borderlands (89 million), or even Civilization (71 million). Another outside bet could be the Mafia series, which already has a new instalment confirmed to be in the works alongside BioShock.

A while back Ubisoft revealed about a billion Assassin's Creed projects. The first of these to leap into the carefully placed haystack of release was Mirage, which I liked. Up next, it seems, is the artist formally known as Assassin's Creed: Codename Red. All we knew about red was that it would be set in feudal Japan, something fans have been clamouring for for literal years. Now we know that it's an AC game set in feudal Japan called Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it's getting an "official cinematic world premiere trailer" debut on YouTube tomorrow, at 5pm BST.

The last few weeks I’ve been watching quite a few YouTube videos (thanks, Evo Japan), and noticing that adverts during videos a) seem to pop up every 30 seconds or so and b) then last for an unskippable 30 to 60 seconds. My frustration with being bombarded by YouTube ads in videos for which I pay nothing to watch - meaning that I understand the necessity for ads of some kind to support creators and pay server bills - came to mind as I read about EA’s plans to explore inserting advertising into games, which I pay up to £70 a pop to play.

US publishing giant Electronic Arts is looking to introduce in-game advertising into its products.

This summer, we’re living in a brave new world. E3 is officially dead — for real this time. That means there’s a vacuum to be filled as publishers still look to showcase their games during high-profile events. There’s both good news and bad news for anyone who looks forward to E3 season. The good news? Summer Game Fest is filling that gap, alongside several streams that’ll orbit around it. The bad news? Keeping track of it all is a huge pain.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson made a string of controversial statements in the company's most recent earnings call, with potential in-game ads and comments about the next Battlefield raising some eyebrows. 

Mass Effect and Dragon Age veteran David Gaider has hit back against his former publisher's apparent "hunger" for AI development tools, referencing developer BioWare's biggest failure to do so.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed in a recent earnings call that the company is working on putting in-game advertisements into its releases, viewing them as a "meaningful driver of growth".