Loss of FIFA Brand Didn't Hurt Electronic Arts
The latest financial report released by Electronic Arts shows that the company is doing very well. One source of high revenue is EA Sports FC 24, even though the game does not have „FIFA” in its title.
Electronic Arts has published a new financial report, which covers the second quarter of fiscal year 2024. With this, we learned information on revenues from July 1 to September 30. The results of several games under the EA Sports banner "exceeded expectations" of the company. According to the document:
- Revenue amounted to $1.9 billion, an improvement of 0.5% over the same period in 2022;
- net profit amounted to $399 million - a result 33% higher than at the same time in 2022.
As we mentioned above, Electronic Arts did not expect such high revenues, which the company owes mainly to several game. Results of the Madden NFL brand were 6% higher than in the same period last year. Titles from the popular football game series are also responsible for the success.
Last year's FIFA 23 and EA Sports FC 24 are selling very well. The big achievement is especially the success of the second of these games, which attracted millions of people despite a new approach to the series, including, most notably, a title change - which came about due to the end of EA's agreement with the International Football Federation. In the first four weeks after its release in EA Sports FC 24 was played by more than 14.5 million people (this includes both console and PC versions) and the game is on track to beat the overall score of FIFA 23 (this could have been inferred already from the early access version).
EA's chief executive, Andrew Wilson, claims that sales of FC 24 may be so good precisely because of the title change and the new premise in the series or simply represents the result of the fact that "things are slowly coming together for the company" (via GamesIndustry.biz) . As he said:
"We are so far very satisfied with the release [of EA Sports FC 24 - editor's note]. (...) I firmly believe that we have attracted new fans thanks to the amazing experience the game offers and very good marketing, but at the same time we realize that a good number of people are still playing the previous game - we are now working to get such players to switch to FC."
In addition, free EA Sports FC Mobile, which was released only for mobile devices, is also doing very well and has reached the brand's record for the number of players. The title was installed by 2 million people on the day of its release, and as many as 11 million in the first ten days.
Taking into account the aforementioned stats, Electronic Arts expects an overall slight increase in the annual performance of EA Sports' soccer brand relative to 2022.
It is worth mentioning that the financial result of the free online shooter Apex Legends was lower than in the corresponding period of 2022, but it still exceeded Electronic Arts' predictions.
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