Having fallen short of their projected goals in 2018, EA are now setting new ones and the company expects BioWare's shooter Anthem to sell 6 million copies in the first six weeks on the market. Let's just hope they don't end up jinxing it.
EA have delivered their financial report on the third-quarter of fiscal 2019, which is period ending on 31 December, and you know things are bad when FIFA 19 is the highlight of the report.
Thankfully, the outlook for the fourth quarter is looking much better as the company hurried to mention Anthem, banking on its popularity to sell 5-6 million copies before the fourth quarter ends on 31 March 2019.
As you're probably well aware by now, Anthem launches on 22 February 2019, so the 6 million figure is just the beginning of what hopefully grows into a successful franchise.
EA's CEO Andrew Wilson said, “Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations. We are now applying the strengths of our company to sharpen our execution and focus on delivering great new games and long-term live services for our players."
Anthem hasn't really gotten off to a great start, in spite of all the hype, although most of the gripes were related to performance rather than the game itself. Well, there were those $20 EA were slammed over but the company said that the prices were not final, so we'll have to wait and see.
EA also touted the launch of Apex Legends, Respawn's new battle royale that's taken the , which hopefully improves the company's fortunes. Granted, we are talking about a free-to-play game but when done right - free games tend to do well. I mean, Fortnite anyone?
BioWare
Unfortunately for EA, the two games they were betting on in the third quarter were Command & Conquer: Rivals and Battlefield V, neither of which managed to meet their expectations.
We must admit though, it would be really ironic if Apex Legends was the game to get them out of a bind, especially knowing how they treated the original Titanfall.
Anthem, action RPG shooter by BioWare and Electronic Arts
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