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EA's staying clear of VR for now

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 18 Nov 2015, 2:20pm

EA's staying clear of VR for now

 Stash that flight suit. There'll be no Star Wars or any other EA license for VR headsets coming any time soon.

One would have thought, as a big name in gaming, that EA would be chomping at the bits to get into VR. After all, it's practically a brand new gaming market and as a games publisher, it make sense for EA to want  a piece of the pie, right?

Apparently not.

EA's CFO, Blake Jorgensen, told those gathered at the UBS Global Technology conference that's not the case for the publisher. Instead of opting to dive right in, the company will take a cautious, wait and see approach to VR before deciding when it'll devote resources to the technology.

"There's some challenges still and I think the biggest challenge is just the size of the market," Jorgensen said.

Jorgensen is talking about how the market for VR is still in its infancy. Even if early adopters flock to VR, it's still a niche market compared to mainstream gaming and if a market's not big enough for EA, they won't hesitate to drop their support for it.

"We don't make games anymore for the Wii or the Wii U because the market is not big enough, the PS Vita – the Sony product – we don't make games for that anymore because the market is too small, so it's all about the size of the market." Jorgensen said.

Still, the company isn't writing off VR yet. In fact, when asked when EA might consider dipping its toes into the VR waters, Jorgensaid replied ,"I think the reality is, the next one to three years, it's probably going to take some time to build up a sizeable marketplace and you might see alternative uses for virtual reality first before it becomes gaming,"

So it's not a matter if EA is going to support VR, it's just a matter of when.

When EA does get into VR gaming though, we really hope they bring back Dead Space!

- Source: gamesindustry.biz (via Tech Radar)

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