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EA boss Wilson wants AI to make game dev 30% more efficient

EA boss Wilson wants AI to make game dev 30% more efficient

The CEO of US publishing giant Electronic Arts, Andrew Wilson, has been espousing the supposed benefits of generative AI for game development.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference – as transcribed by TechRaptor – the exec said that he was approaching this new "incredibly exciting" tech with a mindset of how it could make game development 30 per cent more efficient in the future. Wilson does say that there isn't any data to back this up, but that's at least what he is hoping.

EA is seemingly already using generative AI in its games. For example, last year's EA Sports FC 24 has 1,200 run animations for its players, compared to the 12 that were in 2022's FIFA 23. Wilson went on to say that "it's not unreasonable" to assume that it could increase its player base by 50 per cent by providing more personalised experience. The exec says that this personalisation could also increase monetisation by 10-to-20 per cent.

Again, these statements are vague predictions and not based on anything meaningful.

“What we’ve seen every time there’s been a meaningful technological advancement in media and in technology, where you are able to democratise an industry and hand it over to the population at large, incredible things happen,” Wilson said.

“And so, the way we think about this is how do we build these things to be more efficient? How do we build these things to allow us to build deeper, broader, more deep, more personal experiences? And then how do we give that to the world.

“And once you give that to the world where you have three billion players around the world creating personal content and expanding and enhancing the universes that we create, and building and creating their own universe on our technology platform, all of a sudden we are the beneficiaries of platform economics.

“And for me that’s a multi-billion dollar opportunity for us in addition to what we would otherwise get from our regular growth.”


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.