Cowen and Company, a financial services organization, has put out a report downgrading the value of Electronic Arts shares because it believes Titanfall 2, which is out this week, will suffer from lackluster sales and miss the expectations that the publisher had for it.
“We are downgrading EA shares … because we believe that ‘Titanfall 2’ sales are going to be substantially disappointing, enough to offset upside from ‘Battlefield 1,'” analyst Doug Creutz wrote.
“We expect a correction in shares between now and early next year as we believe the stock is priced for upside to current Street consensus.”
The investment group expects the game to sell between 5 to 6 million copies, down from the previous 9 million forecast. They blame the game’s lackluster sales not on its quality, but on the timing of its release.
Titanfall 2 comes out in between the releases of EA’s own Battlefield 1 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which is out next week.
“We suspect EA believed that by launching two shooters next to Call of Duty it could put a large dent in its biggest competitor, but instead EA appears to have wound up shooting its own foot off,” they said.