Sorry, Mass Effect fans: no Andromeda this year. EA has revealed in a recent press conference that Mass Effect Andromeda will be coming out by Q1 2017.
EA CFO Blake Jorgensen held a talk at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference this week, and within he revealed the release dates for their upcoming major games. EA already revealed planned release dates for the other mentioned games, but indicated a release window for Mass Effect Andromeda for the first time in a while.
These are Jorgensen’s exact words, as transcribed by fans:
We’ve got a great year ahead… we’ve got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it’s called TItanfall, it’s the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in that quarter… We have our Mirror’s Edge runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we’re pretty excited
Note that EA’s financial year is different from the conventional Roman calender. Their Q4 for financial year 2016/2017 is actually Q1 for calendar year 2017.
Based on how Jorgensen described their releases as well, it seems that EA has sufficient faith in all these projects that they have stretched their releases apart. In this way, EA ensures there won’t be overlap and these games won’t be cannibalizing sales from each other.
In a investor’s meeting last month, EA had a looser release window for Mass Effect Andromeda, between October 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017. This time we know for sure it will be sometime between the first three months of 2017. That means it will have been roughly three to four years since it was first confirmed to be in development.
Mass Effect Andromeda will be published on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
