Star Wars Jedi: Surivor – EA has stopped short of outright confirming it for a March release (pic: EA)
An EA investors call lends further credence to its next Star Wars game launching in March and offers insight into EA’s marketing strategy.
While EA has yet to confirm anything beyond a 2023 release window for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, there’s already enough evidence to suggest that it’ll launch within the first quarter of the year.
Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb shared insider info on the game before its announcement and claims that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will be out in either February or March.
Further proof seems to have been found courtesy of a recent EA investors call, despite EA deliberately avoiding any specifics.
One of the first questions investors asked was regarding EA’s release schedule for the final quarter of its 2023 fiscal year, which covers January through March.
Back in May, EA’s own financial results for the 2022 fiscal year said that it had four undisclosed titles planned for January through March: a major IP, a sports game, a remake, and a partner title.
That partner title has subsequently been revealed as Monster Hunter clone Wild Hearts, which is in development at Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force studio.
The major IP has always been assumed to be Star Wars Jedi: Survivor but since EA has never confirmed it, an investor asked if the lack of a name means it could be pushed into the next quarter.
CEO Andrew Wilson gave an interesting answer, implying that there’s nothing to worry about and that actually they’re changing the way they do marketing.
‘You shouldn’t read anything into that other than the nature of marketing in our industry has meaningfully changed over the past five or six years,’ he explained.
‘You might remember when we launched Apex Legends, we didn’t tell anybody about it until about 48 hours before the community get to play it.’
Waiting until the last minute to start sharing important details on a game has become increasingly common (pic: EA)
He later said, ‘For each franchise, our development teams and marketing teams come together and think through what is the most appropriate time to begin meaningfully communicating with our community around what titles are coming.
‘We feel really good about that particular title as it turns out. Actually really, really good. But it just – our teams right now are still working through the appropriate timing for launching and marketing, communicating around that title.’
A full transcript can be found courtesy of The Motley Fool but, long story short, EA thinks it’s too soon to start advertising the game (whether it’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor or not) and it makes more sense to begin marketing it closer to release.
This strategy did work out for Apex Legends, with it attracting 10 million players in its first three days and going on to become one of EA’s premiere ongoing titles.
However, Apex Legends was an unknown new multiplayer IP that was successfully marketed by paying famous influencers to promote it. Survivor is the polar opposite, being a single-player game that’s part of one of the most established media brands in history.
Nevertheless, it does make some sense to not start promoting your game until closer to release. Some games start the process very early and, especially if they’re caught up by delays, it’s easy for people to get sick of hearing about them.
This isn’t something exclusive to EA either. Nintendo, with some exceptions, has a tendency to not announce games until they have a firm release date, with Fire Emblem Engage (announced in September for a January 2023 launch) being the most recent example.
In more recent years, publishers have organised press previews only a month or so before a game launches.
That’s partly due to the pandemic having a severe impact on the industry as a whole but even before that publishers would regularly go through phases where they didn’t do previews, or even withheld review copies, until the last minute.
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It’s fascinating for an executive like Wilson to come right out and explain this marketing approach. However, it’s quite likely that this will eventually change in the future, as a new marketing fashion takes over.
Industries are dictated by trends; they stick with what works until something better or more popular comes along. Marketing strategies are no different, but it’ll be interesting to see for how much longer this particular trend lasts.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launches for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC in 2023.
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An EA investors call lends further credence to its next Star Wars game launching in March and offers insight into EA’s marketing strategy.
