EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed plans to “harness the power” of its game communities and use advertising as a “meaningful driver of growth” for the company.
In EA’s latest financial report, Wilson fielded comments from investors, advising that whilst the megacorp needs to be “very thoughtful about advertising”, given “many, many billions of hours” are spent on its games, “advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for [EA]”.
“To answer your question on advertising broadly, again, I think it’s still early on that front,” Wilson said. "And we have looked over the course of our history to be very thoughtful about advertising in the context of our play experiences.
It’d have to be done perfectly for me to be “okay” with it, because I’m pretty fundamentally opposed to being advertised to, especially by a product I already paid for. And yes, it’s EA so it’ll probably be either a forced encounter in-game or it’ll literally be a banner ad in the menus.