http://www.computerandvideogames.com/30 ... -gears-ea/
Andy Robinson wrote:Respawn's EA-published shooter is "sci-fi oriented" and will allow the publisher to "compete with things like Gears and Halo".
That's what EA Games Label president Frank Gibeau revealed in an E3 meeting this morning, going on to confirm that the publisher will "continue to follow our rotation strategy" for its FPS franchises, but "do it in a way that allows us to maximise technology investment".
EA's planning to alternate Battlefield and Medal of Honor releases on an annual basis, but Gibeau told meeting attendees it will release Respawn's project when it sees an "opportunistic" window.
"In general we're going to continue to follow our rotation strategy of giving studios a full two-year cycle to get a game built and polished to maximum quality, but we're going to do it in a way that allows us to maximise technology investments like Frostbite 2, the online service models that we're doing... we're going to be able to trade team knowledge and increase the quality of the products year in, year out," he said.
"The idea is to have that rotation happen with Battlefield and Medal of Honor and keep it fresh so you don't burn the teams down or over-annualise the product lines.
"Titles like Respawn - and I think the Insomniac title is a little bit more of an action game than a pure shooter - we'll sprinkle those in where we see opportunistic gaps, either in a release schedule or in a genre standpoint."
He added: "Those typically are more sci-fi oriented shooters, where as the Medal of Honor and Battlefield brands are obviously more modern military oriented.
"So it allows us to pick and choose the best of the sci-fi shooters. It allows us to compete with things like Gears and Halo and put them on places in our release calendar where they're not cannibalistic to the core business and that's the essential strategy going forward."
It's been speculated in the past that Respawn - which is headed up by Infinity Ward co-founders Vince Zampella and Jason West - is secretly working on a sci-fi shooter.
At last year's E3, analyst Michael Pachter said: "One genre that hasn't been cloned a lot is the space shooter.
"I'm going to make the prediction that ex-Infinity Ward guys, Respawn Entertainment, will make a Halo killer, a game which will take the form of a space shooter."