EA has gone through a bit of a tough week because its shares have dropped by over 16% in market value during this period, which equates to $6 billion in loss. This is being attributed to the pre-earnings announcement of FC 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard not being the commercial successes the company had hoped for.
Electronic Arts cautioned stakeholders this week that it expects a significant decline in its live service sales figures for this year, even though it has originally expected to see an increase instead. Out of the two reasons above, FC 25 is being cited as the bigger reason due to its slowdown in the holiday season.
But BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn’t blameless by any means, as when it came out in October, it missed its budgeted sales predictions but half. This came out to 1.5 million players, which is not a paltry number to scoff at but is far below what the publisher had hoped for.
Just a day after the announcement of the relatively slow year in the pre-earnings release, the company saw an instant drop in market value from $37.3 billion to ~$31.3 billion.
EA’s FC makes about $2 billion every year according to Reuters, and within that, almost $800 million is from the Ultimate Team.
MoffettNathanson analysts talked about Ultimate Team and how it has become the “Swiss clock” of interactive media in terms of growth. If it stops performing like it is, EA has to figure out a way to fill that void of lower engagement or suffer such losses in market value.
EA Sports FC 25 is doing better again and has just seen the series’ biggest mid-season overhaul in the past week which based all the main changes on community feedback. As for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it came out in October last year on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Since then, the director of the game, Corine Busche, left BioWare due to a better offer from another studio.
