EA CEO pushes back against the idea of an Apex 2.0 to solve its issues after the title's disappointing quarter

As Apex Legends "fell short of expectations" during Electronic Arts' otherwise record Q2 FY25, CEO Andrew Wilson pushed back against the idea of an 'Apex 2.0' to fix its issues during the earnings call's Q&A.

As part of the company's financial presentation, CFO Stuart Canfield highlighted that Apex Legends had seen "lower player engagement" for the quarter ended September 30, 2024, but that EA is continuing to invest in "meaningful change" for the title.

In the Q&A portion of the call, an analyst asked how much of the "systematic rethink" of Apex "can be done fixing a part while the car is in motion," wondering whether it required "a whole studs up rebuild and something like an Apex 2.0 might be the way to go about it rather than incremental change."

"It's a really good question and probably beyond the scope of this conversation," Wilson answered. "But what I would say is that typically, what we have seen – in the context of live-service driven games at scale – is the version two thing has almost never been as successful as the version one thing.

And so actually, the objective right now is to ensure that we are continuing to support the global player base that we have and deliver the new innovative creative content on a season-by-season basis, as well as build these other things, but build them in a way that players do not have to give up the progress that they've made or the investment that they have put into the existing ecosystem."

"What we have seen is the version two thing has almost never been as successful as the version one thing"Andrew Wilson

He continued: "Anytime we call a global player community to have to choose between the investments they've made to-date and future innovation creativity, that's never a good place to put our community in.

"And so our objective will be to continue to innovate in the core experience, and you are seeing that from season-to-season now as our seasons get progressively bigger, and we're changing kind of key modalities at play within those seasons and then build additional opportunities for engagement in different modalities of play beyond what the current core mechanic delivers.

"And we think we can do those two things together, and we don't believe we have to separate the experience in order to do so. But again, the team is working through this now."

Apex Legends overhauled its battle pass pricing earlier this year, before reversing its decision following backlash.

As part of the call, Wilson also addressed the upcoming release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is launching tomorrow. EA's CEO said BioWare's latest has "breakout potential."

"We have a team that took extra time to make sure the world was rich and the characters were interesting and the story was compelling – I think we're going into a market that has limited competition for this category of game given some of the moves that have happened across the broader industry," he said. "And so while I think it's too early to predict the outcome the critical reviews have been incredibly strong. The team feels really energised by what they have delivered. And my sense is that yes, it has breakout capabilities."

EA delivered a record quarter, mainly driven by the excellent performances of its sports titles as Wilson said that "a big part of the evolution of [EA's] business has moved away from a product launch on an annualised basis or even a seasoned bound service."