Electronic Arts May Be Looking Into A Streaming Service

Blake Jorgensen, who serves as the chief financial officer for Electronic Arts, is no stranger to controversial comments. Earlier today, he spoke at the UBS Global Technology Conference 2017 about the many complaints weighed against the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront II, and asked gamers to "be patient" while the company attempted to remedy the situation.

But that's not the only topic Jorgensen addressed while speaking at the conference. He noted that the publisher may be looking to make a move into streaming services, though it obviously won't affect its current software service.

Jorgensen noted that he believes new platforms will grow better over time, and that the company is working on "some streaming opportunities" when it comes to the gaming side of things. He wouldn't elaborate further, but he did note that a partner would be involved, and that such a service could "open gaming to a much broader audience."

That's a bit questionable. For the moment, there are various streaming services available that offer games-on-demand, including PlayStation Now, but they aren't quite getting as big an audience as anticipated – at least, not yet. EA could change that with its vast library of games, but the question is if it could set up a service that coincides with its current EA Access program on Xbox One and Origin Access on PC, without necessarily conflicting with them.

Jorgensen did note "big potential" with such a service, and if there was a way to involve gamers more (and perhaps even introducing livestreaming capabilities), it could be getting somewhere. Alas, it's a big uphill climb – just ask anyone on the PlayStation Now team.

The CFO also noted that there's big potential with game streaming, especially with the massive growth of data centers, but he still feels improvements can be made with better bandwidth and faster connections. The goal for the company is to cut latency down to "virtually zero" before it can even get such a service off the ground.

The company will likely have some sort of announcement during next year, possibly at a returning EA Play event, which could again run alongside E3. We'll see what it has in mind over the next few months.