You will recall a couple of weeks ago that Electronic Arts VP Patrick Soderlund said the publisher is “absolutely actively looking at” remastering the Mass Effect trilogy for current-day platforms. That represented a dramatic change in direction from the previous year, when he told Game Informer that EA's focus is on making new games, not re-releasing old ones.
But now it looks like he may have spoken too soon. EA's chief competition officer Peter Moore didn't deny the possibility outright when he was asked about it in an interview with IGN, but he made his position very clear.
“It's just not what we do. We've got incredibly talented devs and studios around the world who are focused on delivering new IPs, new experiences, more and more live services,” he said. “Could we make an easy buck on remastering Mass Effect? Yes. Have a thousand people asked me that? Yes they have. Do we have... No. I mean, we just feel like we want to go forward. There's a little thing called Mass Effect Andromeda that we're totally focused on at BioWare, and it's going to be magnificent. Anything that distracts from that... Do we have teams lying around that are doing nothing right now, that can go and? No, we don't. We want to focus on the future.”
Moore acknowledged that there's a demand for a remake, but said that's true of many of EA's properties. “There is a lot of people who want Skate 4. There's a lot of people that want Fight Night to come back. We're a 34-year-old company that has thousands of pieces of IP around the world," he continued. "Road Rash! And if you allow yourself to take the easy road, to go do something here—and again, not to diss remastering great franchises—but there are so many opportunities for us, and there's an opportunity cost for this, to have people do something else other than what their objectives are to go forward.”
Moore and Soderlund clearly aren't on the same page here, which does us no good in trying to predict whether or not this is actually going to happen. Based on my understanding of corporate structures, Moore is higher up the ladder than Soderlund, but even so I think will eventually do it—that's just too much money to leave on the table, especially given the new Mass Effect audience that Andromeda is bound to drive. Peter will probably pass on the tattoo this time around, though.
The relevant bit starts at the 1:16 mark. Thanks, Shacknews.
