EA Has No Plans for Switch Beyond FIFA... for Now

We’ve already heard that Bioware and EA have no plans on bringing the latest Mass Effect to the Nintendo Switch unless enough people raise a fuss about it. This isn’t terribly surprising: Mass Effect doesn’t have a history on Nintendo consoles, and after the Wii U, it’s perfectly reasonable for EA to be dubious about spending the time and money to port a game over to a new Nintendo console.

But that attitude extends beyond merely Mass Effect. While EA does have one game coming out on the switch, as a launch title even (FIFA), any other games are going to be put on hold until the company can be sure it’ll be worth their time.

We learned this via an interview between IGN and EA vice president Patrick Soderlund, who claimed EA would be taking a “wait-and-see” approach.

“We have the benefit of being a platform agnostic company. We will be at whatever platform the consumers are. New hardware is always a positive for our industry. It allows us to push forward.”

Despite his reservations, he personally has a lot of faith in the console, particularly when asked if he thinks it could bring back interest in mobile gaming.

“I think it can, I hope it will. There’s no denying [smartphones are] the biggest platform today. That’s not going to change in the foreseeable future. But I think the types of game experiences you can get on the Switch will be different than what you can get on a smartphone. The power of it and the types of games will, I hope, bring a renewed interest in portable gaming. That’s what I hope.”

I very much doubt EA is the only company who’ll be hesitant to start fully backing Nintendo’s new console, but maybe the recent uptick in sales might be enough to change their minds? I doubt it, but it’s certainly a good sign.