Where was Mass Effect Andromeda and how on earth did we not get a substantial gameplay demonstration if it’s supposed to be coming out in 2017? Sadly, the answer is likely that the game is nowhere near ready, and that we should probably expect Andromeda to miss its scheduled launch window again.
Why do EA keep pushing themselves into the corner by showing games far too early? We simply should not have even seen or heard anything from Andromeda at all if it still has a significant amount of time until its ready to launch. Have EA not seen the benefit of waiting until a game is further through its development until teasing footage? Surely Bethesda demonstrated the value of that practice last year with Fallout 4.
Even if the lack of detail for Andromeda was a letdown, gamers could perhaps have hoped that EA’s Jayde Raymond would detail some new information about the range of Star Wars games that are currently in development. But again, all we got was fluff. Gamers were privy to almost every single piece of information that Raymond discussed at the conference. We saw a tiny amount of footage for Visceral Games’ new title, but nothing substantial. Again, there’s just nothing new here; no oomph in any of the announcements. The more EA continue to mismanage their gaming portfolio, the more their conferences will continue to suffer like this. And the end result is that gamers are always going to be underwhelmed, and rightly so.
Of course, we did at least get to see a significant amount of Titanfall 2 gameplay during the press conference, and despite the obvious interest in pushing the game’s single player campaign, we actually got to preview some superb looking multiplayer gameplay as well. The biggest takeaway though is that EA clearly has a corporate imperative to make a big drive towards trying to turn Titanfall into a noteworthy franchise.
Indeed, there is a real sense that the combination of a robust single player campaign and a multi-platform release is an attempt to lay a foundation for an IP that they hope is going become a big cash cow in the future. Yet, their release window in competition with Battlefield 1 just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and there seems be a shocking lack of foresight with respect to how that game is going to perform commercially versus the aforementioned shooter.