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Star Wars Battlefront Biggest Digital Launch In EA History, But No Specific Numbers Given
While its become rare for publishers to share sales stats for its titles, EA has told investors to anticipate shipments of 13 million copies by March 31, 2016. While the company isn’t saying how many copies of Star Wars Battlefront have been shipped or sold, EA is combating some concerning news about the game’s performance.
Yesterday, GameStop (Disclosure: GameStop is Game Informer’s parent company) indicated that sales of Star Wars Battlefront have “fallen short of expectations.” The result was a dip in EA’s stock of about five percent, despite GameStop suggesting that sales will start to come back into line through the holiday season, especially alongside the release of The Force Awakens.
“We expect Star Wars to be one of the strongest titles for the holiday seasons, so sort of move beyond launch and think about Star Wars as a brand with the movie coming out,” said GameStop chief financial officer Robert Lloyd. “So we expect it to get back towards our on-track for our expectations.”
Today, EA is touting that Battlefront is the biggest digital launch in company history, on top of being the overall largest Star Wars launch ever. Earlier today, the company revealed a new mode for the free Battle of Jakku DLC and support for the two popular big team modes on one of the two maps.
Last week, we published an analysis piece on EA’s digital portfolio and how the company’s shift toward that distribution mechanism is helping its bottom line. You can read that entire breakdown here.
[Source: EA]
Our Take
EA clearly felt the impact of GameStop’s statements, despite the company hedging in favor of an uptick closer to the film release. As I wrote last week, digital is becoming a huge portion of full title sales. However, without specific numbers or a reasonable point of comparison, it’s hard to pin down Battlefront’s digital performance beyond the superlative EA offered.
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