Coming off of news surrounding Apex Legends and its waning popularity amongst streamers, Respawn has begun discussing its update rollout plans going forward. There is some good news, more of the studio is going to be working on Apex to keep it consistently fresh. The downside is that this does mean that future Titanfall games will be pushed back.
Apex Legends essentially became an overnight success following its surprise launch earlier this year. At the moment, Respawn has three teams, one working on Jedi: Fallen Order, one working on Apex and another preparing a mystery Titanfall game that was initially due out later this year. In an update post, Apex Legends producer, Drew McCoy explained that in order to fully support Apex Legends, the studio is “pushing out plans for future Titanfall games”.
No resources are going to be pulled away from Jedi: Fallen Order, which makes perfect sense as not only does EA really need a win when it comes to Star Wars, but the game is due out in November, so nobody on that project can really be spared during these final months.
Respawn is also planning on pacing its future seasonal updates in a way that keeps employee burnout and crunch periods down. This means that new content may not always be super fast but Respawn won't be falling into the same trap as Epic Games, which was recently revealed to be in an eternal state of crunch keeping on top of Fortnite.
KitGuru Says: This year's Titanfall game was not going to be Titanfall 3, and it wasn't officially unveiled yet. With that in mind, I don't mind seeing it take a back seat for a bit. Once Jedi: Fallen Order wraps up, there should be more employees available to pick Titanfall up again for 2020.