The online free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends has been around since 2019 and wasn’t released on Switch until 2021, but the overall goal is to keep the franchise going for a very long time.
In an interview with our friends at GamesIndustry.biz, game director Steven Ferreira mentioned that the team was in it “for the long haul” — aiming to keep the IP around for a possible 15 “or more” years.
“We believe in Apex as a franchise that will be around for 10, 15 or more years, and we’re excited to make that happen. To make that happen, we can’t just put everything up front, burn out and not be ready to do it for the long haul.”
Ferreira notes that the game is currently in its sixteenth season – with the studio now delivering certain content that was “held for a long time” until the game reached a certain level of quality and aligned with the needs expressed by player feedback.
To alleviate some of the pressure, Respawn is opening a third studio in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Its immediate purpose will be to support the Apex Legends live service, but in the future it could potentially be assigned to other Respawn projects. This studio will be led by Ryan Burnett, who previously worked at Epic Games as director of engine production. He also worked on the Call of Duty series for 14 years for Raven Software.
Apex Legends has grossed over $2 billion to date. In more recent updates, EA is also believed to have scrapped the single-player project within the same universe.
