EA says Bioware will reveal its new IP soon, Mass Effect trilogy remaster unlikely to happen

Bioware is currently hard at work on Mass Effect: Andromeda, but according to EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Soderlund, the developers' brand new IP will be revealed "in the not too distant future".

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Soderlund said: "We've been very open about the fact that Bioware is working on a new IP, and we'll get to talk about that in the not too distant future,. We have other teams working on new IP as well.

"I think it's about a balance, right? Making sure that we continue to push what great looks like for Battlefield or Fifa or Madden – or Star Wars, for that matter – while continuing to invest in something new."

Last month, Soderlund teased that although he could not make an official announcement, the team "is actively" looking to remaster some of its older titles, with fans hopeful this could mean the Mass Effect trilogy on Xbox One and PS4.

EA's chief competition officer Peter Moore, however, shot down fans' hopes of that happening anytime soon saying the company is currently "focused on delivering for the future" rather than revisiting the past because "that's just not what we do".

"Can we make an easy buck on remastering Mass Effect? Yes. Have a thousand people asked me that? Yes, they have," Moore said in an interview with IGN. "We just feel like we want to go forward. There's a little thing called Mass Effect: Andromeda that we're totally focused on at BioWare and it's gonna be magnificent."

"Do we have teams lying around that are doing nothing right now that [can go and make remasters]? No we don't," Moore explains. "We want to focus on the future and delivering new IP and new experiences. There's easy money to be made all over this industry. But the real focus should be on being player-first and focused on delivering new IP and new experiences and that's where our real focus is."

Moore's latest comments echo his previous statements against the new trend of remastering older titles that he says "feels like pushing out stuff because you've run out of ideas".

Soderlund also said in the GamesInudstry interview that the gaming industry as a whole has become much better in recent years at learning and understanding which projects work and which ones don't. However, he emphasised that although players influence the development process of a game, they should not have complete control over it.

"We don't want to design by committee, we don't want to go out and let the players design the games for us - that's not who we are," Soderlund said. "But we do want to make sure that we have touch points with players out there, so we can understand if we're thinking about this in the right way.

Soderlund said the company recently opened a facility in Stockholm for its DICE studio that brings in consumers, films them playing games and interviews them to get an idea about their likes, dislikes, levels of frustration and more regarding a particular game.

"It's a much more scientific approach to development, and I want to make sure that we continue down that path while also remembering that not everything can be engineered," Soderlund said. "We need to own the creative, we need to be the ones pushing where we're headed."

Announced at EA's 2015 E3 press conference, Mass Effect: Andromeda is slated to release in 2017.