Given the overwhelmingly negative feedback to Anthem ahead of its proper launch this Friday (the game has been available to EA’s Origin Access Premier subscribers since last Friday), one might expect the game would underperform. And while Apex Legends has been doing well, giving EA bit of a buffer, the fact that Anthem is one of the two major pillars they are resting their hopes on for this quarter would, ordinarily, cause panic among investors and market analysts.
However, surprisingly, the opposite is happening. For instance, in a new notice by analysts Piper Jaffray (via market analysis site Seeking Alpha), Anthem is enjoying a “surprisingly high” purchase intent among customers in the lead up to its launch, according to their own survey.
“Our survey of >600 gamers indicates a surprisingly high level of purchase intent for Anthem,” their note, which is not available in full on Seeking Alpha, says. “Specifically, our combined survey results show that ~25% of current console owners intend to purchase Anthem. For comparison, when we did a similar survey for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in Sep-15, it showed a purchase intent of 40% for that title (a game that went on to sell 23-24M units in its launch year).
“Clearly, 25% of active console owners are not going to actually buy Anthem, but we are encouraged by the high level of interest. In fact, we were so surprised when we conducted a first survey in late January, which showed 22% buying intent, that we did a second (smaller) survey on 2/11 to ensure our initial findings were not off-base, and that second survey actually showed higher intent (35% buying intent for the second survey — for combined purchase intent between the two surveys of 25%).”
They also note that the trailer views-to-like ratio for Anthem on YouTube is higher than the original Destiny, and the last two Assassin’s Creed games, as well as on par with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, which according to them, is more evidence that the game is primed to do well. This would tie in with BioWare’s own assertions that most feedback they have received on the game from players who played the demos is positive—so who knows, maybe in spite of the reviews, Anthem will end up doing great.