EA unveils their plans for upcoming games at EA Play 2020

EA’s annual live stream event, EA Play, is usually part of the E3 proceedings. With E3 canceled this year, EA decided to go it alone. This is where they set out their plans for the coming months, and start to talk about upcoming releases. This year was a decent outing, with some great news on upcoming games revealed, and a shift that suggests EA are going to be a bit more open to player feedback going forward.

Here are the main takeaways from EA’s annual live event, showcasing their upcoming plans. I’ve focussed on just the announcements that are relevant to players on PC.

More EA games are coming to Steam. We’ve already highlighted the first and second wave of games from EA making their Steam debut, and coinciding with EA Play was the third wave of titles. Newly released on Steam are games like Titanfall 2, Dead Space 3, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Need for Speed: Payback, A Way Out, and The Sims 4. There are still a few games that are curiously absent, the first Titanfall is nowhere to be seen, we’re still waiting for Peggle 2. The next iterations of Madden and FIFA were announced to be coming to Steam at a later date, but there are currently no plans to bring any previous entries over. Similarly, Apex Legends will be coming to Steam at a later date, but there’s been no timeframe set for that. Which brings us to…

A big update for Apex Legends is on the horizon, where not only is the game going to be made available on Steam, EA is also going to be supporting multiplayer between all the systems the game is available on. Players on Playstation, Xbox, Origin, and Steam will all be able to join matches together. This will also apply to the Switch version that was just announced. This is probably one of the better F2P battle royale games going right now, and these new developments are going to make it even more appealing.

The cross-play update will be releasing this Fall.

“EA Originals” is the mega-publisher’s label for games that are sort of like indie games, but have the full weight of a massive games company behind them. We got two new titles announced under this banner, It Takes Two and Lost in Random.

It Takes Two is from designer Josef Fares (Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons & A Way Out), and it’s another game about a pair of characters working together. With a narrative focus and some challenging themes, this is going to be one to keep an eye out for.

Lost in Random is a very creative looking action-adventure game, about exploring a strange and unpredictable world, joined by a sentient D6.

This is a 3v3 shooter that focuses exclusively on rocket launchers, no pistols or SMGs to be seen here. This was actually announced last year, but back then it was going to be published by Nexon rather than EA. It’s changed hands, but it’s nearing release now. It’s got an Overwatch inspired look, and a unique hook, but beyond that, I don’t think it’s particularly exciting. You can see it for yourself when it launches next month.

After a little tease earlier in the week, EA shared the first proper look at what to expect from Squadrons. We now know that it’s going to contain both a single-player campaign and a 5v5 multiplayer mode. The story will have you jumping back and forth between a “diverse group” of Space Antifa and Space Nazis, as you pilot a variety of classic Star Wars ships through space-based missions. It’s a little disappointing that they don’t appear to have any planet-based missions, can you really call it a Star Wars flight game without a Hoth level? It certainly looks shiny, and a lot of attention to detail has been given to matching the look and feel of classic Star Wars, but we’ll have to wait until October 6th to make our minds up for sure.

For their “One last thing” final surprise, EA finally announced that a continuation of the beloved Skate series is underway. After years of fans pleading for a new Skate game, EA is going to deliver.

Game Director Deran Chung said, “We’ve been waiting years, honestly, to make the right game, at the right time, with the right idea.”

Creative Director Cuz Parry “We want to thank you for your passion, your patience, and all the support that you’ve shown us to get to this point. It’s amazing, we cannot believe you commented this into existence. Amazing!”

Skate is Back! pic.twitter.com/EAQgt95HW2

— Electronic Arts (@EA) June 18, 2020

They stopped a little short of naming this project, they didn’t call it Skate 4 or anything else. It’s not exactly clear which platforms this new game will come to. They snubbed PC with the original trilogy of games, but it’s hard to imagine a new entry wouldn’t be on all viable platforms. From the sounds of things, it’s in the earliest stage of development at this point, so it’s going to take a little more patience, but it’s great news to see EA return to this fan-favorite series.

The full stream has been archived here, but it is quite full of fluff, so you may want to skip through any of the dull parts.

Overall though I think it was a decent selection of updates from EA. Certainly, a step up from some of the car crash EA Play streams from previous years. Did anything in particular interest you from this stream? Any EA series that you want them to revive going forward? Let us know in the comments.