Though highly anticipated games like Anthem didn’t meet EA’s expectations, Respawn’s Apex Legends definitely surpassed them. In the conference call following the company’s Q4 and full fiscal year 2019 report (as reported by Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad), the battle royale title was noted to be EA’s fastest growing new game. There have been over 50 million players, with 30 percent of them being new for the publisher.
Respawn is currently working on new content, including new Legends and plans to releases the game on other platforms in new markets. To that end, Apex Legends will be coming to mobile devices, and even releasing in China. The success of the free to play model has incentivised EA to create more such games over time (though it’s committed to $60 “premium” titles as well).
Apex Legends released in February 2019 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC with very little build-up. It hit 25 million players in just week and 50 million players within a month. Despite losing steam against Fortnite on Twitch, the developer said it was focused on the quality of its content as opposed to speedy delivery.