EA’s CEO discusses the companies plans for virtual reality

When you’re the CEO of the second largest video game publisher in the world, people have a tendency to take what you say seriously. Case in point, Electronic Arts’ Andrew Wilson recently revealed his company’s plans for virtual reality. At a South by Southwest panel, Wilson said that his company is less focused on the technology of VR, and more interested in exactly how people consume it. 

EA chief executive officer Andrew Wilson recently laid out his company’s current, loose plans for virtual reality during a panel at SXSW Gaming, explaining that in order to design around future technology, the company must first study how people are currently playing games. The strategy is built around the idea that gaming hardware is too volatile a space to plan a company’s distant future around — instead, Wilson explained, you have to start with how that technology will be used to consume games in entirely new ways. “When we think about making games today, we think less about the technology or the means of experiencing the game, and we think more about the modality of play,” Wilson said. “So, how are you trying to interact with that game?”