DICE promises to diversify with new projects

EA's DICE studio is looking to diversify its output away from its best-selling Battlefield franchise in order to continue producing titles it can remain excited to work on.

Although Electronic Arts is known for producing regular updates and expanding IP onto every major format, creative director of DICE Sweden, Ben Cousins, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio is looking to create something entirely new that fills a gap in the EA portfolio.

"One of the things that DICE needs to do is to diversify away from Battlefield because, although Battlefield is tremendously successful and will continue to be so, I think the studio needs something fresh and interesting," he revealed.

"It's important that you believe in what you're doing. It's also important that you play to the strengths of the studio - I don't think we'd do a dancing game, for example. So we'd be looking for something fresh and interesting, something that's commercially viable, something that, if there's a gap in EA's portfolio, would slide in there but something that fits the experience of the studio," detailed Cousins.

The team is currently working on Battlefield: Bad Company for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Cousins believes that because the studio is known for producing best-selling titles, it can afford to take its time to work on new projects and not be forced into pushing out yearly updates.

"I think Battlefield is special, and I like to think it's thought of as special within EA. When you're one of the market leaders on PC - and there are very few games that sell as well as Battlefield on PC - you need to ensure that you produce quality, and hopefully that will mean that we get more time to develop new titles."

He also hinted that online services may be a future revenue stream for the company.

"DICE has always been at the forefront of online and I think that we're going to skip the notion of updates and go into services. I think that's the obvious way forward for us, to have continued revenue streams coming from different ways of looking at things," he said.

The full interview with Ben Cousins can be read here.