Apex Legends‘ explosive overnight success upon launch back in February was unexpected, to say the least. With 50 million players flying through the admission gates to Kings Canyon within the battle royale’s first month, Respawn publicly struggled to keep pace with fan demand for new content. Forced to sideline its plans in order to deal with cheaters, bugs and myriad performance issues, Season 1: Wild Frontier dropped a month later to a troublingly lukewarm reception.
In light of the latter’s poor performance, both revenue and player numbers nosedived to levels far below that of initial figures, painting a bleak picture for the game’s future. Several months on, preliminary reactions to Season 2’s announcement at last week’s E3 paint a positive picture for the road ahead and Respawn, finally, appears to have hit its stride. But even in the current climate, talks of a potential sequel still circulate the web to no end. Speculation that couldn’t be further from reality, says executive producer Drew McCoy.
Speaking to USGamer in a recent interview, McCoy discussed the topic of Apex Legends‘ development process and why it indirectly means a sequel will never happen.
I mean, most people don’t realize how long it takes to make anything, and so a character for us takes about a year and a half to make. So we’ve been playing Wattson since early last year, but we have so much stuff in the pipe right now coming that people are always like, ‘So what are you guys gonna do for this or that?’ Like dude, we’re thinking years ahead at this point. We do believe in this game as a live game. We’re never gonna make an Apex 2; hoping next Season 2 is awesome. That’s kind of where our head is at: how are we setting this up for the long term.
Strong words from McCoy, then, but it’s a completely understandable sentiment and one that lines up with previous comments concerning the studio’s current three-year plan. With a development cycle that spans years, the last thing Respawn wants is to split development between two iterations of the same game. In truth, the title already has a strong foundation ripe for expansion that prematurely abandoning it would be little more than a waste of potential.
Apex Legends is here for the long haul, then, and sees its biggest update yet, Season 2: Battle Charge, go live next week, July 2nd. Excited? Let us know what new content you’re most looking forward to in the usual place below!
