EA CEO Suggests Apex Legends 2 Not Part of Plans as Season 22 Falls Short of Expectations
Electronic Arts is likely not looking to work on an Apex Legends sequel, the company suggested at its FY 2025 second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. EA CEO Andrew Wilson, in response to a question about a potential “Apex 2.0” at the conference call, said a second iteration of a live service title was almost never as successful as the first version, and maintained that EA’s focus was on continuing to support Apex Legends players with seasonal content updates.
Apex Legends Falls Short of Expectations in Q2 2024
EA held its Q2 2025 earnings call on Tuesday, reporting record net bookings of $2.079 billion (roughly Rs. 17,480 crore) for the quarter. The strong results were driven by EA Sports franchises like College Football 25, Madden 25 and EA Sports FC 25. At the quarterly earnings call, the EA CEO touched upon live service title Apex Legends, confirming that the shooter fell short of expectations in the quarter following the launch of its Season 22.
According to Wilson, the franchise required widespread changes to re-engage players and drive live service growth. “Following changes to the Battle Pass construct, we did not see the lift in monetization we had expected,” Wilson said at the earnings call.
“Two things have become clear in the free-to-play FPS category. First, in a competitive landscape where brand, a strong core player base, and high quality mechanics matter more than ever, Apex has proven to be a compelling franchise for us and an industry stalwart,” Wilson said.
“Second, to drive significant growth and re-engagement, large systematic change is required. We will continue to focus on retention and breadth of content in service of our global community as we work towards more significant, innovative changes in the future,” he added.
Apex Legends 2 May Not Happen
However, in the Q&A session at the earnings call, Wilson appeared to rule out Apex Legends 2. In response to a question about the need for an “Apex 2.0” rather than an incremental update, Wilson said that EA’s objective was to deliver season-by-season updates and continue to bring creative features to the existing game instead of an overhaul.
“But what I would say is that typically, what we have seen again, in the context of live service driven games at scale is the version two thing has almost never been as successful as the version one thing,” Wilson said. “And so actually, the objective right now is to ensure that we are continuing to support the global player base that we have and deliver the new innovative creative content on a season-by-season basis, as well as build these other things, but build them in a way that players do not have to give up the progress that they’ve made or the investment that they have put into the existing ecosystem,” he added.
The chief executive said he did not believe a “separate” experience was needed to re-engage Apex Legends players.
“Anytime we call a global player community to have to choose between the investments they’ve made to date and future innovation creativity, that’s never a good place to put our community in. And so our objective will be to continue to innovate in the core experience, and you’re seeing that from season to season now as our seasons get progressively bigger, and we’re changing kind of key modalities at play within those seasons and then build additional opportunities for engagement in different modalities of play beyond what the current core mechanic delivers. And we think we can do those two things together, and we don’t believe we have to separate the experience in order to do so. But again, the team is working through this now,” Wilson said.
Apex Legends Season 22
Apex Legends, while still a popular online shooter with a dedicated player base, has experienced a decline in player numbers in the five years since it launched in 2019. In August, EA launched Apex Legends Season 22 with new features like more modes, a new map, and new a new anti-cheat system.
However, net bookings for the game fell short of EA’s expectations in Q2 2025, even as it extended freemium access across the entirety of the first half of the Season 22 Battle Pass, the company reported in its financial results for the quarter. Consequently, EA said it had adjusted the rest of FY 2025 to reflect lower than expected engagement for the game.
Despite the lowered expectations for Apex Legends, however, the company announced it was on track to maintain mid-single digit growth for its core live service titles.
