As the year begins to draw to a close, many publishers and platforms are wrapping up their year in gaming stats. One such publisher is EA, which has today released a detailed breakdown of its success stories in 2022. Amongst these, two main franchises have stood out amongst the roster of other titles and series. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks as though the FIFA and Apex Legends franchises of games have been EA’s biggest hits this year.
The statistics have been compiled from EA’s user data, with FIFA coming out on top in the sports game franchise category. Across EA’s existing FIFA titles, the franchise had the highest total unique active players, the highest average daily active users and the highest average monthly active users. Players also scored a collective number of over 32 billion goals in FIFA titles across 2022, with excitement surrounding this year’s World Cup more than likely adding to the games’ popularity.
Apex Legends was also a big hit for EA this year, taking the top spot in EA’s most popular non-sports franchise of the year. Over a billion players sent in-game thank you’s in Apex Legends, with the “GG” or “good game” message being used over 9 million times in September alone. The popular shooter has seen ongoing popularity this year, with its most recent season introducing a new map, additional game modes and a brand new character into the game.
While competitive play is clearly at the forefront of EA’s roster, another smash hit for the publisher in 2022 has been The Sims 4. The game went free-to-play not long ago, which no doubt added to its impressive total of 1.4 billion hours of play time having been logged. All that time means many more Sims, with EA revealing that 18.5% more characters were created this year as compared to 2021. Altogether there were 436.5 million Sims created in 2022, meaning that there’s clearly a sizeable audience for the iconic life sim franchise as it moves into its next evolution with Project Rene.
EA has seen an influx of new players across the globe this year too, to see a total of 600 million active players. The majority of players new to EA titles came from the Asia and Pacific regions, followed by Europe, then South and Latin America. The lowest number of new players came from North America, which made up only 12.8% of EA’s new audience.
For a more detailed breakdown of EA’s year in gaming, you can check out the stats on their dedicated website.
