EA says its cloud gaming service ‘is not competing’ with xCloud

Electronic Arts doesn’t view its own game streaming service as a competitor to the likes of Microsoft’s Project xCloud.

That’s according to EA’s chief technology officer Ken Moss, who appeared at Microsoft’s X019 event last week to announce that Madden NFL 20 was one of 50 new titles that had just been added to the preview phase of Xbox’s cloud gaming service.

He also said three more EA games are headed to xCloud “in the coming months.”

The xCloud partnership was announced shortly after EA launched a PC cloud gaming trial featuring FIFA 19, Titanfall 2, Need for Speed Rivals and Unravel in September, as part of a technical test of its Project Atlas technology.

“We definitely do not see it that [we’re competitors],” Moss told GamesIndustry.biz. “That is really not our goal. We haven’t announced exact next steps on what we’re doing with ours.

“We are pushing it, but I view it as actually part of our strategy — bringing our games out to the cloud and taking the learnings back to our studios, giving us the information on how we need to evolve our core platforms like Frostbite and our services platform and AI. That’s what we are doing. We’re not at all interested in competing on platforms.”

Moss went on to say he believes cloud gaming will massively expand the gaming audience over the coming years.

“With streaming, our motivations are to be where the players are so that they can play our games wherever and however they want. Our actions are consistent with that.

“How cloud gaming evolves is uncertain right now, but it’s going to bring in another billion players into the gaming world. We say we’re at 2.6 billion or so right now. We want to make sure we’re at the forefront, but also get the early learnings so we know how to change how we build our games in that world.”

Moss previously said EA’s cloud gaming trial is designed to measure how the company’s title’s perform in real-world conditions, including unstable bandwidth and network strength, and to test the technical functionality of cross-play (trial participants can interact with PC players on Origin) and cross-progression.

“One of the most exciting parts of cloud gaming will be the ability to deliver full-scale HD games to any device a player wants to use, such as a smart TV, OTT streaming devices, PC or Mac laptops, tablets, and smartphones,” he said in September.

“This means that you would be able to stream a Madden HD game directly to the smart TV in your living room, or even in a hotel room if you’re traveling. You could even also continue same session on the go, right on your smartphone.”