{"id":93195,"date":"2019-05-08T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/342290"},"modified":"2019-05-08T20:15:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T20:15:00","slug":"ea-in-advanced-negotiations-to-bring-apex-legends-to-china-and-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/08\/ea-in-advanced-negotiations-to-bring-apex-legends-to-china-and-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"EA in &#8216;advanced negotiations&#8217; to bring Apex Legends to China and mobile"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During a call with investors (transcribed by <a href=\"https:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/4261270-electronic-arts-inc-ea-ceo-andrew-wilson-q4-2019-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single\">SeekingAlpha<\/a>), EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that the company is currently in talks to bring <em>Apex Legends<\/em> to China and mobile platforms.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese government is infamously strict about what games it will approve for monetization and release in the country, and those regulations have <a href=\"http:\/\/gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/341134\/Chinas_game_approval_rules_will_soon_apply_to_HTML5_and_WeChat_minigames.php\">only strengthened<\/a> this last year. But, for the games that can get approved China can be a valuable market given the fact that the country represents a <a href=\"http:\/\/nikopartners.com\/china-gaming-regulator-to-introduce-new-approval-process-this-month\/\">$30 billion video game industry<\/a> and over 600 million players.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are in advanced negotiations to bring <em>Apex Legends<\/em> to China and to mobile,\u201d said Jorgensen, \u201cAnd we will update you on timeframes when those negotiations are concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, details are unclear. Fellow battle royale games <em>PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds <\/em>and <em>Fortnite<\/em> followed similar paths after first releasing on PC and consoles, though Tencent just this week had to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/342255\/Tencent_shuts_down_PUBG_Mobile_in_China_following_approval_struggles.php\">pull support for the&nbsp;<em>PUBG<\/em> mobile game<\/a> in China due to licensing complications.<\/p>\n<p>Even without a mobile version of the game or a release in China, EA says that <em>Apex Legends<\/em> is \u201ceasily the fastest-growing franchise we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d The company&#8217;s current forecasts see <em>Apex Legends<\/em> bringing in net bookings in the range of $300 million to $400 million in the 2020 fiscal year, and that\u2019s before even considering income from a mobile or Chinese release of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During a call with investors (transcribed by SeekingAlpha), EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that the company is currently in talks to bring Apex Legends to China and mobile platforms. The Chinese government is infamously strict about what games it will approve for monetization and release in the country, and those regulations have only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}