Dragon Age 4 release date won't happen before EA's FY2023 period

In its recent earnings report, EA sent clear signals that Dragon Age 4 won't release until at least its FY2023 period.

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EA's recent earnings call was firmly focused on the immediate future of FY2022. Battlefield, Apex Legends, EA Sports, and mobile were the stars of the call as EA outlined its new ambitious three-part strategy. BioWare was only mentioned a single time during the call, and the words Dragon Age or Mass Effect weren't said once. This alone telegraphs Dragon Age 4 won't launch any time soon and is still locked to at least FY2023 (March 2022 - April 2023) or even beyond.

In the earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson described the new Dragon Age as an "out year" game. This makes sense as Dragon Age has been rebooted a few times since concept development started in 2016. After a brief reboot towards a live game, BioWare now says Dragon Age 4 will be singleplayer-focused.

"We've talked about a college football game, we've talked about a skate game, we've talked about a new game from Motive, we talked about new game - Apex. We've talked about a number of new FIFA titles from our mobile group and new mobile titles in Asia," Wilson said in the call.

"I would tell you that we still feel really good and really strong about all of those, and that they are that are tracking as we believe they would, including a new title coming out of BioWare. So nothing new to give you beyond that other than we still feel very confident in our outgoing or out-year portfolio. And we also have some other things that we are kind of incubating that we think will further add to them in the year to come."

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EA has previously said Dragon Age would be part of its FY23 timeline:

"Dragon Age is out there, we've talked about it publicly, it probably comes after Fiscal 2022. You should assume it's out there and plans are under way for that product," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said in October 2019.

It's an interesting contrast to EA's previous comments. This call was laser-focused on outlining its new ambitious three-part business strategy and the immediate future of FY2022's massive $6.8 billion earnings potential.

EA also relayed that it's not ready to give up on PS4 or Xbox One just yet, but Dragon Age could end up being next-gen exclusive if it releases far into 2022.