EA has proven to not be immune to the issues facing the video game industry, but perhaps to a greater degree that we usually expect.
As reported by MP1st, EA revealed in their latest financial earnings call that both Dragon Age: The Veilguard and EA Sports FC 25 did not live up to expectations. This does not mean that these two games flopped, or that they didn’t break even. But it can be taken as a sign that EA’s business isn’t showing it’s usual resilience, even with the power of its brands.
Now, some may say that one could understand that this happened to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. For various reasons, the title proved controversial and divisive, regardless of its positive reception with reviewers. The game sits at a MetaCritic of 82 on PlayStation 5, but a user score of 3.9. This situation led to MetaCritic themselves making a response.
EA previously declined to share Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s sales, but we now know that it reached 1.5 million players. That sounds good on its own, but EA actually projected it would reach twice that amount.
What is really surprising, however, is that EA Sports FC 25 also didn’t make the business that EA expected. The franchise formerly known as FIFA still did good business when EA dropped the association’s license and launched its new branding last year. So this doesn’t seem to be because of that entire rebrand.
Subsequently, last year EA had a very successful revival of EA College Football 25, AKA the franchise that was most famous under the NCAA license. But EA already reported their success for that title in its quarter last year, and the situation now is different.
Whatever name you use for it, EA’s association football franchise is notorious for innovating and popularizing monetization and lootbox mechanics in the industry. In spite of condemnation from fans and journalists, it’s been a very successful formula for EA for all these years.
Or so we should say, it’s been a successful formula until now. EA’s loyal players did have a lot of criticisms of EA College Football 25 before, but EA has also had poorly reviewed games in this franchise before. As we pointed out, regardless of critical reception, EA has been able to coast for a very long time on aggressive monetization of this franchise.
But perhaps this is the wake-up call that EA needs, that the franchise that used to be known as FIFA needs a different kind of game overhaul than the direction that they chose to go with. Hopefully EA sees that that change also means making gamers happier over exploiting their fandom and potential addiction.
