It’s a surprise to no one that microtransactions and live service games drive the vast majority of EA’s revenues as a company (something that has defined much of their practices over the years), and in their recent quarterly financial briefing, they revealed new figures to back that up.
During Q3 of financial year 2019-20 (which ran from October 2019 to December 2019), EA raked in a revenue of nearly $1 billion – $993 million, to be precise – from microtransactions alone (or “live services”, as the company dubs them in its fiscal presentation). That represents a 27 per cent year-on-year growth over Q3 FY19. Meanwhile, the trailing twelve month period saw them earning $2,835 million in revenue from microtransactions, which, too, is a 27 per cent YoY increase from 2019, when they raked in $2,241 million.
Those are massive numbers, but not all that surprising, especially when you consider EA’s output as a whole- and especially in 2019. The likes of FIFA and Madden continued to be huge moneymakers for the publisher, but notably, Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends also launched in 2019, and was surly a huge contributor toward this figure.
From April 2020 to March 2021, EA plans on releasing total of 14 games, of which four are going to be major non-sports titles. Meanwhile, in their recent financial call, they also spoke about developing for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, as well as their plans to support the Nintendo Switch. Read more about both through the links.