If a player buys an EA game, the company will be able to follow that player across platforms such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, the iPhone, Facebook, and EA’s own Origin online gaming service, said Rajat Taneja, the chief technology officer at EA, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.
The move will enable EA to follow gamers wherever they want to play and still track their activity, and that could help EA embrace new business models and target better marketing pitches at gamers as they play EA’s games.
“Our strategic vision at EA is to create a single backend system so that we can truly embrace the secular trends in our industry that are creating massive growth for games,” he said. “And we will be able to embrace all of the new business models that come with that.”
One example is appointment gaming, where a player can find friends in a game regardless of what platform they are in and then start a multiplayer session with them, so long as the game permits that kind of play. EA’s technology will allow it to find a gamer in real time and then communicate the friend’s message in a timely manner.
The move will enable EA to follow gamers wherever they want to play and still track their activity, and that could help EA embrace new business models and target better marketing pitches at gamers as they play EA’s games.
“Our strategic vision at EA is to create a single backend system so that we can truly embrace the secular trends in our industry that are creating massive growth for games,” he said. “And we will be able to embrace all of the new business models that come with that.”
One example is appointment gaming, where a player can find friends in a game regardless of what platform they are in and then start a multiplayer session with them, so long as the game permits that kind of play. EA’s technology will allow it to find a gamer in real time and then communicate the friend’s message in a timely manner.
This process apparently took 1,500 engineers and over 18 months to complete. Oh, and if you think this means cross-platform play will come as a result of this, think again. It's not that level of unification.
You can read more about this improvement over at VentureBeat.