Electronic Arts CEO, Andrew Wilson, offered insight into EA’s plans for virtual reality at SXSW Gaming over the weekend. He explained that the company is planning to enter the virtual reality market, but is first studying how people will play games using the new technology.
Wilson outlined the current trends in which people consume video games, all of which are tied to the way they physically interact with the hardware.
“There’s the ‘lean back’ modality, which is, I’m sitting in my living room across from an 80-inch TV, 7.1 surround sound, and I want high-def, high fidelity, highly immersive entertainment,” Wilson said. “That’s the first modality that we have to sort of fulfill for games. The second is the ‘lean in’ modality; that’s kind of the PC type, where you have a lot of drive for shooters, RPGs and RTS-type games. Irrespective of what computer is driving it, there’s this proximity you have to the experience and that’s the style you want to play that.”
Mobile games are consumed in the third modality, which is the ‘lean over’. Which is essentially hunched over a smartphone or tablet. In this context, EA sees VR as a potential fourth modality – the ‘Get In’ type. He did not go into more detail about what this means, but mentioned that it would attempt to deliver on the promise of being inside a video game.
[source: Polygon]
