Electronic Arts recently wrapped up its EA Play press conference, where it showcased its upcoming titles for the year, ahead of E3 2017. While the spectacle of new AAA games drew the most attention, one of the most overlooked announcements was the company's reworked research division. The "Search for Extraordinary Experiences Division" (SEED) is an internal skunkworks at Electronic Arts, which has been established to pursue cutting-edge advancements for use in games. As explained on stage by the company's Executive Vice President, Patrick Söderlund, SEED is an avenue for "exploring visionary concepts" within EA – a feat that's sometimes hard to pursue within today's major AAA publishers.

Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more Planting the SEED Looking past its swanky new logo, SEED as a concept is an interesting movement to see within a major video games publisher. While its introduction was left somewhat vague, to some extent this comes down the core dynamic of such a group. The actual role of the division will be forever changing around current technologies, which requires rapid growths around ongoing events – and it should be significantly faster than your traditional game development team. "Creative ideas combined with new technologies become an unstoppable force." What makes SEED promising is its creative approach to these advancements. As a part of Söderlund's introduction, deep learning, neural networks, and advanced AI were all mentioned on stage in passing. While these are all growing domains within the technology industry, SEED's role is to approach them from a creative standpoint. With an intent to bring these technologies into games, it is the implementation that will make them stand out in the market.

Though SEED's advancements could lead to some unique and innovative new titles in the future, the group's early work is transpiring in EA's upcoming titles. To kickstart the division, one of its first undertakings has been put into motion with Microsoft's upcoming high-end Xbox console, called "Project Scorpio." With hardware cycles refreshing more frequently, there's a growing drive to stand out from the crowd and leverage new resources. Preparing for the next console launch, SEED has already gone hands-on with Project Scorpio development kits and is working to optimize EA's Frostbite game engine for the platform.