EA have confirmed that Battlefield V failed to meet their expectations, as its underperforming sales resulted in poor Q3 for the company. They said that they made a mistake prioritising the campaign instead of the battle royale mode.
The publisher shared their latest earnings call where they revealed that many bad calls have been made, which resulted in lower sales of Battlefield V.
Dice's WW2 shooter sold more than 7.3 million copies since the launch but that's not in line with EA's expectations, as they were hoping for at least one more million.
While EA didn't explicitly put the blame on Battlefield V, it's clear that they wanted more from the latest instalment in the franchise. Since the shooter was their biggest release in Q3, EA's hopes were pretty high given that there aren't many other titles they could rely on to save the day.
The publisher also talked about the decision that ultimately resulted in these disappointing sale numbers. Apparently, EA's "desire" to make changes to Battlefield V pushed the release date into busy and pretty competitive territory.
Another decision that led to poor sales was to focus the development on Battlefield V's single-player campaign and other features instead of the upcoming battle royale mode dubbed Firestorm. EA executive Blake Jorgensen said that this was a missed opportunity given the popularity of battle royale modes.
‘This year, battle royale modes became incredibly popular in shooter games. As a result of these decisions, we struggled to gain momentum and we did not meet our sales expectations for the quarter," Jorgensen said.
EA
One of the "issues" that potentially led to lower sales is also the still pretty high player count of previous Battlefield titles such as Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 4. The WW1 shooter currently counts 4 million players while more than 2 million active users are enjoying Battlefield 4's modern setting.
EA are hopeful that Battlefield V will have a similar life span and that Firestorm will give the game another boost in sales. The battle royale mode is scheduled for Spring 2019 release date.
Battlefield V, WWII shooter by DICE and Electronic Arts
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