EA CEO Andrew Wilson has stated in a company earnings call that considerations towards adding advertisements into future video games are very much alive within the company. However it’s not a surefire thing – and he stresses that they have to be “very thoughtful” about it.
Wilson says, “To answer your question on advertising broadly, again, I think it’s still early on that front. And we have looked over the course of our history to be very thoughtful about advertising in the context of our play experiences. But again, as we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.”
That history is worth noting, as this wouldn’t be the first time EA has dabbled in video game advertisements. Indeed, Need for Speed Underground 2 was ripe will billboard ads that players could see while driving around, Barack Obama even put political ads in Burnout Paradise in a somewhat controversial move. So the company on a macro scale does have a history with this, it knows what works and how far it can push before people start kicking off.
