EA CEO Andrew Wilson dishes on ‘players first,’ Star Wars: Battlefront, and a new Mass Effect

LOS ANGELES — Andrew Wilson became the chief executive of Electronic Arts in the fall of 2013, after the giant video game publisher suffered a couple of years in a row as the winner of “most hated company in America” award.

Since then, the former game developer and EA Sports chief has focused on a mantra of “players first.” And he says his mission is to remind us that we all need to stop and play a little more in our lives. Wilson said that EA’s competition isn’t with Activision, Supercell, or other game companies. It’s competition with anything that takes our time away from games. And EA is doing well in that competition, restoring investor confidence. It’s stock price is higher than it’s been in years, and with its deal to make Star Wars games, strength in sports with the NFL license, and mobile prowess, EA remains one of the most powerful companies in both the console and mobile markets.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.