In an investor update today, EA said it plans to release a "major IP" by March 31, 2023. For reasons we'll discuss later, it's likely to be Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, a sequel to Respawn's 2019 action-adventure game Jedi: The Fallen Order. Before we get to that, EA CEO Andrew Wilson talks a bit about why EA hasn't been specific about what this "major IP" is.

"The nature of marketing in our industry has changed dramatically over the last five or six years. You may remember that when we launched "Apex Legends" we didn't tell anyone about it until about 48 hours before the community was ready to play it.

"The big change in the last 10 years is, of course, the move from TV [marketing] to digital. For each franchise, the development and marketing teams worked together to figure out what titles would launch and what would be the most appropriate time to begin meaningful communication with the community."

This seems to be a roundabout way of saying that EA thought about when to start marketing and decided that near the release of the game would be a good time. As Wilson puts it, it worked for Apex Legends; Apex was announced as soon as it went live in February 2019, making it one of the biggest battle royale games and shooters of the last few years.

EA had previously teased the unannounced game in an investor slideshow this past May, where it was listed as a "major IP" for early next year, along with a "partner title," a "remake" and a "sports title." The "partner title" was rumored at the time to be "Jedi: Survivor," but it is now clear that EA was referring to the Koei Tecmo game "Wild Hearts," which is published by EA under the EA Originals label. (EA acquired Respawn in 2017, so it is now just an EA studio, not an "EA Partners" studio.) The "remake" on the list is "Dead Space," whose January release date was just recently announced, and the sports title is the new "Super Mega Baseball". The remainder will be "major IPs" that have yet to be revealed.

EA has previously announced that "Jedi: Survivor" will be released in 2023, and Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb (opens in new tab) has claimed for several months that it will be released in March 2023, according to his sources (opens in new tab). A few weeks ago, Mr. Grubb repeated that claim (opens in new tab), saying that the "big partner game" to be released by EA early next year is Jedi: Survivor. A recent PlayStation database leak also puts Jedi: Survivor in March.

It is unlikely that EA was referring to Jedi: Survivor when they mentioned "partner titles," but that is just nitpicking: there is still a "major IP" slot to be filled by the end of March 2023, and Jedi: Survivor is the leading candidate to fill it.

Also, the "major IP" quota is still to be filled by March 2023.

Also lightly relevant is the list of games that leaked from Nvidia's servers in 2021; Nvidia said at the time that this was just a bunch of test material, but since many of the games on this list have since been released on PC, we cannot accept that. Two EA games are included on this list: the Mirror's Edge RTX Remaster and the Untitled Respawn Game.

The untitled Respawn game is almost certainly Jedi: Survivor. Of course, there may be a secret EA game that is nearing release that is not these two games, but the fact that the list does not offer an alternative makes the rumor a bit more credible; I doubt EA would call a Mirror's Edge remaster a "major IP," nor would BioWare or EA's expanded Battlefield division, it's too early for a new one. If it is something else, EA has done a really good job of keeping it a secret while "Jedi: Survivor" serves as a red herring.

Part of me hopes it is indeed a secret game. I don't trust Ubisoft to keep anything secret, but EA has succeeded once with Apex, so it is possible. (It would be a Star Wars game though)