EA has confirmed the suspicions of many gamers and analysts this week, when the company admitted that Battlefield 5 sales had failed to meet expectations. Although the launch of the game was positively successful when compared to that of Fallout 76, which released shortly before, the game’s release had its share of troubles. Now, in the company’s Q3 2019 investors call; EA’s COO and CFO, Blake Jorgensen, confirmed that the game’s sales had fallen short of targets.
Battlefield 5 Sales Haven’t Met EA’s Expectations
During the call, Jorgensen spoke with investors about EA’s upcoming plans, and also gave a report on their recent performance. A major part of that performance concerns the launch of Battlefield 5. According to Jorgensen, the game’s release was ultimately caught between several problematic factors. The most significant of these appears to have been the game’s specific launch date; a date which saw delays into November of last year.
“We made some decisions on launch timing and key features of this game that we felt would improve the quality of the experience,” explains EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson; “For context, Battlefield 5 was designed from the beginning to offer a long-term live service. In August, we determined that we needed some more time for final adjustments to the core gameplay to fully deliver on the potential of the live service, so we moved the ship date to November to accommodate those goals. Unfortunately, the later release date meant the game launched deeper into a competitive holiday window where heavy price discounting was a big factor.”
The October-November release window in 2018 was certainly full. The window saw the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout 76, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and several other major titles. The game nonetheless did sell millions of units, but still performed around 12-15% below expectations. Close to 7.3 million copies of Battlefield 5 were sold in the last fiscal year quarter; the target for the title was around 1 million units more.
Battle Royale Delay Could Have Been a Key Factor
EA also pointed to the decision to prioritise single-player over battle royale as a factor; “We also made the decision to prioritise other features,” said Wilson; “including a single-player experience, at launch over a multiplayer mode. 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.”
Another factor cited by EA was the fact that both Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 continue to support sizeable player-bases. Battlefield 1 has an active monthly user-count averaging around 4 million players. On the other hand, Battlefield 4 still maintains half that; averaging around 2 million monthly players. Evidently, EA failed to incentivise many existing players to move from older games into the latest title. The Firestorm Battle Royale mode has attracted a great deal of attention. However, the mode won’t be coming to Battlefield 5 until later this year.