EA’s Surprising Strategy Towards Virtual Reality

While some companies seem to be diving headfirst into virtual reality, at least one more is holding off. At the UBS Global Technology Conference, Electronic Arts Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said that the company would wait to see how large the market is before developing any VR games.

“I think the biggest challenge is just the size of the market,” said Jorgensen. “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.”

But it’s not because there’s a lack of interest among VR product manufacturers. "As one of the largest software producers we have all of the manufacturers of equipment coming to us to try to sell us on their equipment and giving us development kits to try to build software for it,” Blake said. “So we'll build software for various ones but we'll really wait and see how big the market is going to be."

Jorgensen’s strategy is to wait a few years to see how the VR market develops and what other applications VR technology will have beyond gaming. But according to him, it’s safe to say there won’t really be a sizable market for the technology for at least another five years.

Of course, we'll have to see how the technology performs when the PlayStation VR hits shelves — if everyone starts buying it up immediately, EA may find itself in an awkward position.