EA’s stock has fallen by a whopping 10% on the stock market, owing to no less than their CFO admitting that they have underperformed relative to expectations. The company generated $1.61 billion versus an estimate of $1.75 billion, in spite of a major launch in Battlefield 5 in the reporting period.
“The video game industry continues to grow through a year of intense competition and transformational change,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a statement. “Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations. We are now applying the strengths of our company to sharpen our execution and focus on delivering great new games and long-term live services for our players. We’re very excited about Apex Legends, the upcoming launch of Anthem, and a deep line-up of new experiences that we’ll bring to our global communities next fiscal year.”
The statement is in line with what CNBC reports is company wide attempt to rally around Apex Legends and Anthem in the immediate future as an attempt to rally and come back from this setback. To EA’s credit, Apex Legends seems to be doing very well currently, and given the positive feedback it seems to be enjoying from the community, may continue to do so going forward.
For Anthem, EA has expectations of 5-6 million units sold in the month or so following its launch, which seem decently conservative at first glance—and hopefully will be enough for the game to meet when it launches for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 22.