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EA Expects To Ship 13 Million Copies Of Star Wars Battlefront By March 31
On its second quarter earnings call yesterday, EA set high expectations for investors and analysts. The company said it expects to sell 13 million copies of Star Wars Battlefront by the close of its fiscal year.
“The open beta for Star Wars Battlefront was exceptionally well received by players,” said EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen. “Consequently, we're raising our unit forecast for sell-in during fiscal year 2016 to approximately 13 million units.”
This was later clarified to reinforce that this number reflects anticipated sell-in to retail through the end of the company’s fiscal year on March 31, 2016. When questioned, chief operating Peter Moore explained why EA is so confident about hitting this target.
“Every week subsequent to the beta, we had 9.5 million users who logged in 1.6 billion minutes of gameplay,” Moore explained. “On top of that, we were very fortunate, obviously, that The Force Awakens movie trailer came right on top of that, and that's allowed us to be able to generate even more publicity for the game as people start to anticipate the movie in mid-December. You combine that with all the engagement that our players have creating content themselves, a lot of user-generated content with millions of hours now of gameplay coming out of the beta on YouTube and Twitch. Now if Han Solo was here, we'd say great but, ‘Don't get cocky, kid.’ Our ability to be able to deliver against this is solid and the preorders are excellent, so you've heard from both Blake and Andrew. We feel very good about 13 million units.”
Yesterday, EA raised its full-year outlook despite moving Mirror’s Edge Catalyst out of the fiscal year. That game has been delayed until May 24.
Star Wars Battlefront will be out on November 17 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Our Take
EA has every right to expect the world of Star Wars Battlefront. While it’s far from the deepest shooter available, it rides the coattails of The Force Awakens and is accessible that even more casual fans will likely have a good experience. People are going to buy this because of the license. Provided the game launches without server issues, EA should be just fine.
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