EA is Making a Ton of Money on Live-service Games
Live-service games like Apex Legends and FUT mode in FIFA 21 remain a vein of gold for Electronic Arts. Meanwhile, the publisher is reporting diminishing revenues from sales of its titles.
The buzzwords "live-service game" and "microtransactions" are still resented by many gamers, and in recent years have also attracted the attention of the media, researchers and politicians. The fact is, however, that this business model brings significant profits to publishers. This is confirmed by Electronic Arts' latest financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 (i.e. the period from April 1 to June 30). On a year-over-year basis, the company's net revenue increased by 6% (to $1.55 billion), which was mainly due to digital sales and live-service games. Meanwhile, sales of premium titles dropped again, generating just $329 million. Net profit for the period was $204 million. (161 million dollars less than a year ago). Nevertheless, this result was also better than forecast by EA.
The growing importance of live-service games for EA is also evidenced by data on individual productions. Apex Legends continues to hold the market: each week more than 13 million people on average take part in the game's 9th season. The game also managed to break its own activity record. In turn, since the launch of FIFA 21, the latest installment of the football series has already been checked by 31 million buyers on PCs and consoles. This is apparently due to the growing popularity of FIFA Ultimate Team, despite the recurring controversy surrounding the mode. EA reports that the number of FUT matches played is up 48% from last year.
In this context, it's hardly surprising that Electronic Arts (and others) has repeatedly made it clear that it treats live-service games as the new cornerstone of its business. However, the company is by no means giving up on other projects. In a recent investor call (via AlphaStreet), CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned the remake of Dead Space. News about the return of the space survival horror was to be enthusiastically received by the players, which is not surprising. Wilson emphasized that DS was perhaps the most popular brand (along with the resurrected Skate) from EA's catalogue that gamers wanted to see return. Sadly, the company's CEO confirmed that the release of the refreshed Dead Space is "still far away". Venturebeat's Jeff Grubb should soon explain what exactly does it mean.
