In its recent earnings report, EA has provided further insights into its plans for the popular hero shooter Apex Legends, and what its player community can anticipate.

Apex Legends 2 Not In EA's Plans as It Prioritizes Player RetentionApex Legends' Leading Position In Hero Shooter Genre Is Crucial to EA

Apex Legends is set to begin its 23rd season next month in early November, and while EA's hero shooter remains a top franchise in gaming, its player engagement has fallen since its 2019 launch. Therefore, the game has missed revenue projections—something EA aims to fix with "fundamental changes."

During the company's Q2 earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson addressed Apex Legends' performance, noting a "need for significant systemic innovation to fundamentally alter gameplay."

While declining numbers might suggest an "Apex Legends 2," Wilson's comments indicated EA isn't developing a sequel, given the game's leading position.

"We're managing the current business trajectory," Wilson stated. "But we believe the brand strength, global community size, and top-tier standing among free-to-play live service games will enable us to restore business growth over time."

Wilson also said that Apex Legends Season 22 underperforming had helped EA understand several aspects needing improvement. "Following changes to the battle pass structure, we didn't see the monetization increase we'd anticipated," he said. " Wilson then explained two observations EA made in the free-to-play FPS market:

"First, in the competitive environment where brand, a strong core player base, and high-quality mechanics are paramount, Apex has proven a compelling franchise and industry leader," Wilson noted. "Second, to drive substantial growth and re-engagement, major systemic change is needed. We'll continue focusing on retention and content breadth for our global community while working toward more substantial, innovative changes."

Overall, EA appeared more focused on iteratively improving the existing Apex Legends rather than creating an Apex Legends 2. "It's a great question, perhaps beyond this discussion's scope, but typically, with large-scale live service games, Version 2 rarely matches Version 1's success," Wilson also noted.

Apex Legends Planned for Innovative Updates Seasonally

Wilson additionally said that their objective at the moment is to ensure that Apex Legends' global player base continues to receive support, "and deliver them new innovative, creative content on a season-by-season basis," he stated. Moreover, Wilson said players will receive guarantees that their time and effort spent on Apex Legends are things EA will safeguard as these changes they plan on making will be built "in a way that players don’t have to give up the progress that they’ve made or the investment that they’ve put into the existing ecosystem."

"Any time we cause a global player community to have to choose between the investments they’ve made to date and future innovation and creativity, that’s never a good place to put our community in, and so our objective will be to continue to innovate in the core experience," he explained, "and you’re seeing that from season to season now as our seasons get progressively bigger and we’re changing key modalities of play within those seasons."

EA has begun their efforts to implement these alterations in the Apex Legends experience, Wilson said, additionally noting that their plans to recover from the declining player engagement will manifest "in diverse gameplay modes beyond the current core mechanics." He added, "and we believe we can achieve both simultaneously, and we don’t believe we must separate the experience to do so, but again, the team is addressing this now."