Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson is very optimistic that generative artificial intelligence could help the company reach the “holy grail” of game development. Speaking during the company’s latest earnings briefing, Wilson said EA’s 40-year history will be an accelerant for the company’s plans for generative AI, because it can bake those learnings into a model to help make games faster and make them more innovative and fun. Or at least that’s what the executive hopes. Wilson is making these comments not long after laying off more than 600 people and cancelling games.
Wilson said EA’s developers are asking for advances to AI to help them with their daily processes, though he did not share any specific people or teams within EA that are actively hyped about generative AI. “I would tell you, there was a real hunger amongst our developers to get to this as quickly as possible because, again, the holy grail for us is to build bigger, more innovative, more creative, more fun games more quickly so that we can entertain more people around the world on a global basis at a faster rate,” Wilson said.
Wilson went on to say that the “AI evolution” is still in the “very early” stages, but generative AI tools are already helping EA’s teams to speed up progress. He cited an example of how the developers of EA’s soccer series can now create stadiums in six weeks rather than six months, and he believes this timeline could accelerate further still. For FC 24, Wilson said the game features more than 1,200 running animations for its virtual athletes, which compares to 36 in the game’s immediate predecessor, FIFA 23.
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