The online free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends has been going since 2019 and was only released on the Switch in 2021, but the general aim is to keep the franchise around for a very long time.
In an interview with our friends at GamesIndustry.biz, the game’s director Steven Ferreira mentioned how the team was in it for the “long haul” – with an aim to keep the franchise for possibly 15 “or more” years.
“We believe in Apex as a franchise that’s going to be around for 10, 15 years or more and we’re excited to make that happen. In order to do that, we can’t just put everything all upfront, burn ourselves out and not be ready to do that in the long haul.”
Ferreira notes how the game is currently in its sixteenth season – with the studio now delivering certain content it had been “holding onto for a long time” until the game had reached a certain level of quality and aligned with the needs expressed by player feedback.
To alleviate some of the pressure, Respawn is also opening a third studio in Madison, Wisconsin in the US. Its immediate purpose will be to support Apex Legends, but in the future it could potentially be work on other Respawn projects. This studio will be led by Ryan Burnett, who previously worked at Epic Games as director of engine production. He also worked on the Call of Duty series for 14 years at Raven Software.
Apex Legends has banked more than $2 billion in earnings to date. In more recent updates, EA is also believed to have axed a single-player project set within the same universe.