EA Wants Fortnite-Style Cross-Play For Its Own Games ... Eventually

Electronic Arts has commented on the ever-popular topic of cross-play, and it sounds like the company is enthusiastic about doing more in the space going forward. During a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked directly if Battlefield V or other EA games will feature cross-play functionality between systems. Wilson said cross-play is an "important part of our future development profile," though he stopped short of confirming anything.

Cross-play between consoles exists for some Xbox One and Nintendo Switch games such as Rocket League and Minecraft. However, Sony has yet to connect its PlayStation 4 with any competing consoles. Whatever the case, Wilson said he expects that in 3-5 years, a "great portion" of gaming will exist in the cloud, and will thus be technically capable of being played on any device you may own, though politics between platform-holders may complicate issues.

"We have a vision on a 3- to 5-year time horizon where a great portion of game experiences will exist in the cloud and be pushed to every device you own," Wilson said. "And the game experience you have won't be measured by local CPU or GPU, but will be measured by screen size and session time you have and will drive tremendous liquidity in a market.

On the more immediate horizon, Wilson teased that EA is looking at some of its "key franchises" for cross-play support.

"We're looking at key franchises in terms of how we should deliver cross-platform play ... in a similar way that Fortnite has, especially ... some of our titles have a broad and diverse player base," he said. "Households typically have one console, so the ability to bring PC to console and console to mobile into that play experience can bring families together, can bring friends together. And we think it's an important part of our future development profile, both in terms of mobile games that we have today moving up per se to console and PC, and console and PC games being playable in mobile. And I expect more from us on that front in the future."

With regards to gaming services being available in the cloud, EA recently acquired GameFly's Israel-based streaming outfit to help in its streaming and cloud efforts. We also learned during EA's earnings call that the company may develop its own Fortnite-style free-to-play battle royale game.

For lots more on everything you need to know about cross-play, check out GameSpot's new video featured embedded above.