Electronic Arts recently held a conference call with investors and analysts following its Q1 fiscal year 2019 financial results which cover results from April 1st to June 30th 2018. During this, EA CEO Andrew Wilson revealed that Hazelight’s A Way Out had over 2.6 million players during the quarter. For reference, A Way Out launched on March 23rd 2018 and sold 1 million copies within two weeks.

Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen also noted that sales for the quarter, physical and digital, had surpassed expectations, thanks to A Way Out and titles like Battlefield 1 and FIFA Online 3. Considering the company’s approach to the EA Originals program, it’s definitely a good sign that A Way Out has done well for them.

If indie developers are truly benefitting the most from the deal (as noted by creator Josef Fares, EA isn’t making any money from A Way Out), then it could open the doors for more opportunities. In the meantime, Fares is working with EA again for another project which is currently in “early pre-production” but will go into full production fairly soon.

A Way Out was not Josef Fares’ first game – that honor goes to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. However, A Way Out was how he gained notoriety, thanks especially to a memorable appearance at The Game Awards last year, and it was a successful game- successful enough that it seems like EA, who published it for him, will be partnering with him again on his next game.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Fares confirmed that he will be sticking with EA for his next vision, citing, yet again, the publisher’s support, combined with their lack of interference, and their respect for his creative vision.

“Yeah, we’re with EA,” he said. “It’s no problem. It’s super-good support. I don’t care what publisher I work with, it’s going to be the same. This is how I work: I respect the economical aspect but nobody f***s with the vision – it’s very, very important. And they know it at EA now, and they’re super-supportive – super-supportive.”

Whatever the new game is, however, it’s not even in pre-production yet. “We’re just in the early pre-production stuff, but after this, in four weeks, we’re going to go full production,” Fares said, noting that even once the game does begin development, it is at least a couple of years off.

We don’t know what his new game might be, but judging by his past work, it should be an interesting spin on interactive storytelling, if nothing else. Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, I do encourage you to check out A Way Out, which is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

One of the breakout hits of early 2018, A Way Out, the co-op focused passion project of film director and founder of Hazelight Studios Josef Fares, released to a very solid critical and commercial reception, hitting a million copies two weeks from launch. Apparently impressing EA, they’re more than willing to help Fares fund his next project.

During an interview with Gamesindustry during E3 2018, EA’s Patrick Soderlund explained that they don’t specifically just target projects with mass market appeal for EA Originals, as part of what makes the program great. A Way Out got into the program because the team liked the pitch, Fares, and the story he had to tell. “His execution and the work his team did make players love it,” said Soderlund.

Soderlund capped off the interview specifically saying that he believes the next game from Fares will be larger, more ambitious and granted far more funding. Given how A Way Out and his prior title, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons turned out, giving that man money can only result in good things.

If you’ve played Josef Fares’ A Way Out or even Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the length for both titles would have stood out. While the former is roughly six hours long, the latter only requires three hours to complete. Fares believes that the length of the game should be in keeping with his vision.

Speaking to VG247, he revealed that, “If you look through the statistics of how many people actually play through a game – take a game like A Way Out, I think the playthrough rate on PS4 was around 52 percent.” When told that this was pretty good (especially when many people don’t always finish games), he criticized the industry’s obsession with game length and replay value.

“Yes! And that’s what concerns me, that you think it’s really good. Imagine someone like James Cameron going, ‘Oh, only 50 percent of the people walked out of the cinema, wow, that’s great!’ It’s insane. We have designer teachers who tell their students to focus on the first 40 percent of the game because the rest? People probably won’t see it.

“Why put all that effort in for nothing? We should see games as experiences. It doesn’t matter how long they are. If it’s so common that people don’t play through the games, then why should we even comment on replayability and how long they are? Why should that affect score? It shouldn’t. When my publisher [asked about game length] I was like, ‘Why are you asking that? I’m not even going to answer that s**t’.”

Replay value and game length are both dicey subjects – how do you deliver more content while ensuring it’s at an consistently higher quality? It’s not an easy task. Fares believes that while making a longer game is tougher, it’s all about going with whatever works with his design instead of increasing the game’s length for the sake of it.

Nonetheless, the question of replayability keeps popping up. “Sometimes it feels like we’re serving a table full of food and people get upset when all the food is not there. They’re only going to eat this,” said Fares as he mimicked a bit of food being scooped from a bowl, “But [the rest] has to be there rotten or they get super upset.”

What are your thoughts on the matter? Should games try to throw in as much content as possible at a decent quality? Or should they strive for an excellent experience that could potentially last for a shorter period? Perhaps there could be a balance of both? Let us know in the comments below.

A Way Out ended up living up to its unique co-op action and storytelling potential when it launched last month. It was indeed very surprising to see such a unique game put out by a publisher as otherwise aggressively conservative as EA—but that almost didn’t happen. In fact, according to what the game’s colourful director Josef Fares told IGN in an interview recently, his development studio Hazelight almost signed with Microsoft.

“Brothers opened up a lot of doors,” Fares said to IGN. “I was very close to signing with Microsoft. It was like a week between. We were super close.”

Ultimately, the studio went with EA because of EA’s Patrick Sodurlund reaching out to Fares, sand because EA has offices in Sweden, which is where Hazelight is based, so it felt like a better fit. In spite of this, however, Fares has nothing but good things to say about Microsoft, and especially, Phil Spencer.

“I think that was the best thing that could happen to Microsoft,” he said of Spencer. “That guy is a super cool guy, super passionate about games.”

Spencer indeed has been a positive force for change within Xbox ever since he took the reigns, and it has been fascinating to see him steer Xbox back into the good graces of gamers worldwide. A Way Out is available now on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Some time ago, Josef Fares of Hazelight, the folks who brought us Brothers, and who are now working on A Way Out, made an observation that really shouldn’t have been controversial– that the PS4 is not all that powerful anymore, and more resembles a five year old PC than cutting edge tech. Anyone who has followed the progress of technology knows this statement is true- it shouldn’t have created any controversy.

Unfortunately, the quote was reported out of context, leading to a lot of backlash from fans, and furore and uproar that has since, thankfully, died down. When we got the chance to talk to Fares, however, we wanted to ask him what he had felt about the entire incident. His response? Exactly the reasonable response you would expect- it was entirely taken out of context.

“[It was] so taken out of context,” he said. “And I don’t even want to comment on that. It’s so… I mean, the people who wrote that, it’s so silly, it’s not even worth commenting on. And if I meet this journalist, I would ask them, “like what were you trying to do here?”

Fares went on to add that he doesn’t care about the hardware in the end, so the fact that he had unwittingly become caught up in the middle of a console war for an innocuous statement didn’t sit well with him.

“Look, here’s the fact. Let me make this one thing straight: I’m a passion driven man. I don’t care about hardware. I don’t care about console war, that’s all bullshit, okay?” he said. “That was really, extremely, extremely taken out of context. It’s not even worth commenting on, because it’s so silly, you know. I own every single console, I don’t even care about that. I care about games– who cares about consoles, and if they are good or not good? But people seem to like this console war, and so some journalist wanted to have some clicks on his page, I don’t know.”

I agree with Fares here- the hardware exists to facilitate games (some of the best games of this year were made for PS3 level hardware), and his initial remark, which wasn’t even wrong, totally was taken out of context as well. I would be pretty miffed about that furore, too. Thankfully, it has died down since.

Look forward to our full interview with Fares in the coming days.

Depending on who you were, Hazelight’s A Way Out was either a bizarre concept unlike publisher Electronic Arts or an intriguing new experience. Either way, it made an impact and people were talking about it.

Speaking to Engadget, creator Josef Fares, who also made Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was vocal about one particular aspect of gaming technology: The PlayStation 4. While a PS4 was running the game in front of him, Fares said, “You want the honest truth? This machine is not so strong as you think.

“This is like a five-year-old PC. If consoles were as powerful as PCs are today, you would see all different games. Most of the work developers put out there is to make them work on consoles.”

Given that the PS4 has been out since late 2013 and was considered fairly dated upon arrival, this makes sense. Of course, given that the Xbox One X is the most powerful console ever built and still has its CPU as a bottleneck, it will be interesting to see where console tech goes in the coming years.

Meanwhile, A Way Out arrives in 2018 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

At The Game Awards last week, EA took the stage to announce that it had formed a partnership with the guys who brought us one of last year’s best games, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and their newly formed studio, Hazelight. We also got to see a teaser for the new game that they are working on, but it was so much of a tease that we really didn’t get much of what the game really is.

Well, it seems Hazelight is now willing to talk to us more about the game. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz about their new project, they were surprisingly candid.

“The thing I’m not sure about is if it’s going to sell a lot,” Josef Fares (who was also director of Brothers) said of the project. “I know it’s going to be a great game. Brothers sold like 750,000 units and is actually still selling, but you never know about that. For me personally, I would take that risk to publish a game myself, but not for the team.”

Of course, Brothers was an amazing game, so if this new game is anything like it? You have me on board, Fares. You have me on board.

You guys remember Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons from last year, right? Game was legit, it was great, and it got a lot of recognition for being an amazing title. That it came from an indie studio was even more surprising. Obviously, these guys are very talented, which is why you always want to keep an eye out for what they do next, and tonight, we found out just what that is- apparently, they are working on a brand new game with EA, and they have formed a new studio, Hazelight.

Their new game is apparently not too far along in development, which is why they could not show off much of it, but we did manage to get a new teaser, which you can see above. It looks intriguing, but beyond that, it is very hard to say anything about it at all.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.