STOP THE PRESSES - EA to Release 6 - 8 New IPs

For a while now, I've considered Activision President and CEO Bobby Kotick to be the face of everything wrong with the video game industry.  The man who claimed that "if it was left to me, I'd raise prices even further" and coined the term annualizable, Kotick stood (and frankly still stands) for everything I've come to hate about major publishers.  Activision drove the Guitar Hero franchise into the GROUND, delivering sequel after sequel even long after fans had stopped caring.  They continue to bombard us with a new Call of Duty every fucking year, and they'll only pick up an IP that they feel can be "exploited every year on every platform".

So when Ubisoft's VP of Sales and Marketing, Tony Key, made a statement to near similar effect, I ran through the gauntlet of emotions.  First, I was outraged that yet another major publisher had joined the Annualizable Axis of Evil.  Then I was saddened by having to expect a Watch_Dogs 2 in 2014.  Ultimately, I was rather in awe of Key's courage for being vocal about exactly what every other major publisher was already doing: spamming us with yearly sequels guaranteed to make a quick buck.

Now imagine my surprise when I read this quote today from EA Games Executive Vice President Patrick Soderlund:

"We have six to eight completely new IPs in the works. The day we stop making new IP is when we go onto life support. We need to incubate new ideas and push creative boundaries."

 Wait... What?  EA is trying to push forward new IPs?  Can it really be true?  Well... sort of.  In the same interview with MCV, Soderlund also stated, "We are working on a new Mirror’s Edge game, and although that’s not a new IP, it is a revival done in a new way. We are developing Star Wars Battlefront, which to us is a new IP, even though it isn’t technically."

Assuming that Mirror's Edge and Battlefront are two of the IPs EA considers "new", that still leaves roughly four to six new ideas up in the air.  The real question that should be on everybody's mind is "are these new IPs already doomed to be beaten with the same annual stick as the rest of the corral?

Source: MCV