“Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations.”
EA has reported the recent financial quarter was a difficult one for the company, but it is planning for games like Anthem and Apex Legends to help perk up future earnings.
Today the company released its preliminary financial results for the quarter ending last December. While the numbers do appear to have a slight increase as compared to this time last year, this did not meet EA’s financial expectations.
“The video game industry continues to grow through a year of intense competition and transformational change,” said CEO Andrew Wilson. “Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations. We are now applying the strengths of our company to sharpen our execution and focus on delivering great new games and long-term live services for our players. We’re very excited about Apex Legends, the upcoming launch of Anthem, and a deep line-up of new experiences that we’ll bring to our global communities next fiscal year.”
Games launched during what has been described as a disappointing quarter were Battlefield V and Command and Conquer: Rivals.
COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen also cites FIFA as a success for the company over the previous year coming in as the highest-selling console game in Europe during 2018, with Ultimate Team matches played having increased 15% year-over-year. Jorgensen is also looking to new games like Anthem, Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (which could be out by late 2019), as well as the recently announced Plants vs. Zombies and Need for Speed games to help in the coming months.
Apex Legends, in particular, has had a surprisingly strong start for the company, drawing in 1 million players in less than eight hours even though it has no Titans. While developer Respawn isn’t working on Titanfall 3 we do know that a ‘premium’ Titanfall experience is coming at some point later this year.
Anthem, which releases on February 22, 2019, will also hopefully help EA and you can learn more about our thoughts after spending 20 hours with BioWare’s newest title.
Hope Corrigan is an Australian freelance writer for IGN who had a surprisingly good time in Apex Legends. You can follow her on Twitter.
