While The Force Awakens does not release until December, many fans awaiting something new Star Wars themed have jumped onto Star Wars: Battlefront to hold them over and help pass the time. One of the most eagerly awaited games of the year, EA had predicted sales of 9 to 10 million but have since upped that estimate to 13 million. NY Times reports: “While “Star Wars” games have a checkered reputation for quality and sales, the new game, published by Electronic Arts, has created a buzz with its photorealistic graphics. The game allows players to engage in pivotal battle scenes depicted in the three original “Star Wars” movies. Electronic Arts, emboldened by demand for Star Wars Battlefront, recently bumped up its sales estimate for the game during its current fiscal year to 13 million units, from a previous estimate of 9 million to 10 million. —Nick Wingfield” While this may be what EA…
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SWTOR Subscribers up 33% Since Fallen Empire Announcement
The Electronic Arts Reports Q2 FY16 Financial Results were recently released and gave us some important insight to how SWTOR is responding to the Fallen Empire announcement. In fact, it says that subs are up 33% since. Let’s take a quick look at the overview. From the highlights: Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ subscribers increased 33% since the announcement of the latest expansion at E3, Knights of the Fallen Empire. Over 9.5 million players joined the Star Wars™ Battlefront™ open beta, the largest beta in EA’s history. The game will launch worldwide starting November 17, 2015. Other selected financial highlights: For the quarter, non-GAAP net revenue of $1.146 billion was above guidance of $1.075 billion. Diluted non-GAAP EPS of $0.65 was above guidance of $0.40. Non-GAAP net revenue for EA’s FIFA, Madden NFL and Hockey Ultimate Team™ live services continue to perform well, collectively up 64% year-over-year. EA repurchased 1.8 million…
Star Wars Battlefront business forecasts
The upcoming first person shooter Star Wars: Battlefront is predicted to be a huge seller for EA Games and the Star Wars franchise. With the release of Star Wars Episode VII during the New Year, it should help raise the popularity of the new game even more. Taking a look back to 2005 when the first Battlefront game was released it was a hit amongst many and rated 6th in overall sales, according to NPD. The new Battlefront game should be much better in comparison to the 2005 version with the new updated technology we have now. It will most likely be appealing to casual gamers and hardcore gamers alike, making the number of potential sales to rise even more. It could surpass the sale of other major first person shooters, such as Battlefield 4 and Destiny, which will release this year. Seeking Alpha has some insight on how they believe the…
SWToR remains a challenge after Electronic Arts (EA) releases Quarterly report
Electronic Arts (EA) recently released their regular quarterly report that offered a glimpse on the performance of the mega-company. While overall, EA performed extremely well, a closer look of their released documentation revealed that SWToR didn’t contribute to the company’s overall performance. In specific: Net Revenue For the three months ended September 30, 2014 , net revenue was $990 million and increased $295 million , or 42 percent , as compared to the three months ended September 30, 2013 . This increase was driven by a $476 million increase in revenue primarily from the FIFA and Battlefield franchises, and Titanfall. This increase was partially offset by a $181 million decrease in revenue primarily from the SimCity, Crysis and Dead Space franchises, and Star Wars: The Old Republic . Service and Other Revenue For the three months ended September 30, 2014 , service and other revenue was $454 million , primarily…
SWTOR Segment from EA GamesCom Press Conference
We have an interesting update today on SWTOR from EA’s GamesCom Press Conference. The SWTOR segment touched on a few things we have not gotten updated on in some time, such as the player count. They also touch on some things that are coming soon in SWTOR (things we all known about already but that might serve to bring in some newer or returning players). From EA’s GamesCom Press Conference: The results have been remarkable. Every month, more than a million players are logging in, playing with their friends, and embarking on their own personal Star Warstm Saga. So basically, EA took almost two minutes out of their press conference today to mention SWTOR. You can see the video for yourself at IGN, but the highlights are: recap of the last 18 months reminder that it’s gone free to play updated content Galactic Starfighter new guild rewards new PvP warzones new Flashpoints and…
50 EA Titles to be Taken Offline Next Month Including Star Wars: Battlefront
Big news from EA this week about online service updates coming as soon as June 30th. EA will be pulling more than 50 titles with online multiplayer components and it could affect some games you still play. This can be frustrating news to those of us who still play some of these titles. There are several games that I still play with friends or family and several that are really only fun in multiplayer format so it’s a real let-down that they are pulling them offline. I can respect and understand that an online game will have a lifespan and that it is not reasonable to expect them to be supported forever but it’s still sad to hear this news. Check out the list of 50 titles yourself and see if any of your favorite games are on there. Take note of the following Star Wars games on the list:…
Electronic Arts Names Amy Hennig Creative Director For ‘Star Wars’ Project
Steve Papoutsis, the Vice President and General Manager at Visceral Games had some important news to share recently. Amy Hennig was named creative director for their upcoming ‘Star Wars’ Project. Here is some of what he had to say about the announcement:
EA Plans to Model Star Wars Games after Batman Arkham Series
Reports and interviews coming out say EA plans to model their Star Wars games after the Batman Arkham series. “We’re not trying to build a game that replicates the storyline of any particular film,” says EA boss. EA is telling the fans we shouldn’t expect the upcoming Star Wars games to be based directly on the Star Wars films themselves. Instead, EA will approach it in the same way that Warner Bros. did with the Batman Arkham series. Basically they are not planning to build a game that copies any particular storyline of the films. Instead, they are going to take the core roots of the IP and create an additional interactive experience that fans can enjoy. This is interesting because it also gives the more flexibility with what they do with the games. Remember EA acquired the Star Wars license exclusively last May and it will last for at…
EA May Take Title for “Worst Company in America” for 3rd Time
It’s that time of year again and The Consumerist is having their annual contest for the “Worst Company in America”. And funny enough, it looks like Electronic Arts may take the title for the 3rd year in a row. The process of nominations started already and will continue through 5 pm ET on Thursday, March 13. No company except EA has ever managed to win the prize two years in a row (2012, 2013) as we brought you previously. And now it looks like they could take it for a 3rd year. The winner of this prestigious title gets the Golden Poo award. Both times that EA won the prize, Bank of American was next in line. No offense to any readers who may work for BoA but I’m not too surprised. So will EA win out again and remain the reigning champion or will some other bad American company take the…
Could There Be a New Open-World Star Wars Game From EA?
Could there be a new open-world Star Wars game in the making from EA? All signs point to yes when we look at various job postings from the studio in Canada. An animation director job posting from last month showed that EA Canada has a Star Wars team working on what they call “a major new next gen open world action game.”
EA Will Not Be Making Star Wars Movie Games
If you were wondering if EA is going to make any games about the Star Wars movies, we now have an official answer.
EA Wants to Create Jaw Dropping Star Wars Games
According to recent stories, EA wants to refresh the Star Wars game license and create games that will make “your jaw drop”. For Star Wars game fans, this is good news but will they really pull off this hefty goal? One can only hope, right? “The most important thing for me is that we take the Star Wars license and come up with games where peoples’ jaws drop,” said Patrick Soderlund of EA games to Polygon. “We need to do with this what [Batman: Arkham Asylum] did for the Batman license.” The first game they are set to work with is Star Wars: Battlefront, a game that many fans have been waiting a very long time to see happen. Soderlund says the DICE team will have access to this work. While they could not tell Polygon much about the game, it’s still great news to know it is in development and…
EA Didn’t Ruin BioWare Games, Says Dr. Zeschuk
We have all heard the rumors: EA ruined SWTOR, EA ruined BioWare, EA destroyed BioWare games. But one of the Doctors is speaking out against these rumors. BioWare co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk says he had a hand and a voice in how things operated at EA/Bioware. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the doctor says: Zeschuk also rejects any notion of Electronic Arts being a negative influence on BioWare. “They don’t second-guess you, they don’t say you shouldn’t do that,” he explains. “We had complete creative control over a lot of it; some fans didn’t like some of it and some of it was experimental, quite frankly.” Well, it’s a sign of honor to own up to your own mistakes, right? It’d be easy for BioWare to blame EA for their lackluster year(or two) but instead he admits that they had too much money and possible too much free reign and they made…
EA Responds to “Worst Company in America” Poll; Makes History
EA Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore, has responded to what looks to be EA’s second year in a row winning The Consumerist’s ‘Worst Company in America’ award. Their stock might be on the rise but there are clearly still some issues that EA needs to work out. EA is the first company in the contest’s history to win this award twice (not the type of award you want to brag about, right?) Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore had some things to say about this development: “Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” Moore asks. “I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.” He then goes on to explain how last year they won the…
EA Pays Probst Seven Figures, Looks for New CEO
CEO John Riccitiello recently resigned from Electronic Arts but executive chairman Larry Probst is reportedly taking the reins until a suitable replacement is found. But his temporary position of two roles will not come cheap- As reported by GameSpot, an EA filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week revealed that Probst will be paid an annualized salary of $1.03 million for the duration of the search for a new CEO. In addition to the seven-figure salary, Probst stands to earn an additional one-time bonus for his work from the Board of Directors for his temporary stint as executive chairman of the company. Of course, Probst will be abstaining from any discussion the board has on that particular topic since it would be a conflict of interest. He is also foregoing his board of directors cash retainer fees (which were $100,000 for the company’s fiscal 2012) for the duration…
John Riccitiello Resigns From Electronic Arts
EA CEO John Riccitiello submitted his resignation, effective March 30, the video game company announced Monday. In a blog post on the company’s website, executive chairman Larry Probst said the Board of Directors will immediately begin a search inside and outside the company for Riccitiello’s successor. Check out the Press release below. Electronic Arts Announces Change in Executive Leadership Larry Probst Appointed Executive Chairman, Effective Immediately Company Updates 2013 Fiscal Outlook REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that John Riccitiello will step down as Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors, effective March 30. The Board has appointed Larry Probst as Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition and to lead EA’s executive team while the Board conducts a search for a permanent CEO. The Board will consider internal and external candidates with the assistance of a leading executive search firm. Mr. Probst has played a leadership role…
EA Believes “Freemium” is the Future
Are free to play games with paid upgrades the way of the future? What happened to the days when you go to the store, buy a game and then own it outright- all of it, the full versions of it to play as you choose? Some said that SWTOR would be the last pay to play MMORPG and even it has now gone F2P. Of course, many question how “free” it actually is when there are so many restrictions that you need to pay to unlock. This is what many call “freemium” gameplay models. And if you ask Electronic Arts, freemium is where it’s at. Gamespot tells us: The freemium business model is “where things are going,” according to Electronic Arts vice president of mobile and social studios Nick Earl. Speaking to GameSpot sister site CNET about the recent launch of Real Racing 3, the executive explained that the mobile…
Electronic Arts launches new cross-game pet promotion!
In an effort to draw more attention to other Free-to-play (F2P) titles, Electronic Arts (EA) recently started a new cross-game pet promotion for Star Wars The Old Republic (SWToR). EA’s catalogue of free games is quite extensive and using a popular game like SWToR certainly makes sense. To get these pets, all you need to do is register with the games listed below by April 1st and you will receive an in-game pet. The mini-droid pet you get for Battlefield It’s worth noting that this listing is incomplete since only the following games have been confirmed. This doesn’t mean that other EA F2P titles aren’t eligible. (In parenthesis is the name of the pet) Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances (2C-TA Commander) Battlefield Heroes (J9-BH Mercenary) Battlefield Play4Free (BF-4F Warrior) Need for Speed World (N4-SW Runner) Lord of Ultima (LU-20 Builder) Does this mean that SWToR’s conversion to F2P is yielding the expected for EA results? If…
EA Financial Call
Electronic Arts had a financial call yesterday. Unfortunately there weren’t much news about how SWTOR are doing, other then early indications for SWTOR F2P transition were positive. In other news coming out of the financial call, Electronic Arts said its loss for the third quarter narrowed from a year ago, mostly on lower expenses. Adjusted profit, which excludes special items, beat estimates by a penny, although revenues fell short of expectations. Moving ahead, the company detailed its outlook for the fourth quarter and revised its full year guidance. Electronic Arts third-quarter loss narrowed to $45 million or $0.15 per share from $205 million or $0.62 per share last year. Excluding items, earnings dropped to $0.57 per share from $0.99 per share last year. On average, 26 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.56 per share for the quarter. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude special items. Revenues for the third quarter dropped to $922 million from…
EA to Release Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2013 Results on Jan. 30, 2013
EA issued a press release today that they will have their 3rd quarter fiscal year 2013 results on January, 30th. “In conjunction with this release, EA will host a conference call to review its financial results for the third quarter, discuss its outlook for the future and may disclose other material developments affecting its business and/or financial performance. Listeners may access the conference call live via a dial-in number or audio webcast.” Details as follows: Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013 2:00 pm Pacific Time (5:00 pm Eastern Time) Dial-in numbers: Domestic: 773-799-3213; International: 888-677-1083 Passcode: EA Webcast: http://ir.ea.com EA’s financial results release will be available after the close of market on Jan. 30, 2013, on EA’s web site at http://ir.ea.com. A dial-in replay of the conference call will be available until Feb. 14, 2013 at 203-369-0099 (domestic) or 866-356-3373 (international). An audio webcast replay of the conference call will be available for one year at http://ir.ea.com. This is the first earnings call since SWTOR…
Ben Cousins Paying to Win Talks about F2P Game Model
In November 2009, EA hit the headlines when the BATTLEFIELD HEROES team made sweeping changes to their in-game economy and virtual item catalogue that many felt would completely destroy the game, as Ben Cousins explains in his “Paying to Win” talk that covers the free to play gaming model and if and how it works. While consumer press, forum users and players claimed that the new game model ruined BATTLEFIELD HEROES, economic statistics would show EA otherwise. Despite the predictions of destruction, over a year on, BATTLEFIELD HEROES continues to be a powerhouse in the free-to-play space, with nearly 7 million registered users, no declining trend in active users, and it long-term future assured. So, what happened? In this talk, Ben Cousins, General Manager of Easy (the EA studio behind BATTLEFIELD HEROES) takes us through the story of this controversy. Through the development of BATTLEFIELD HEROES and the early performance…
Irish BioWare Support Center for SWTOR Converting to General EA Use
The BioWare facility that was just built last year in Galway, Ireland to be a support center for SWTOR is now expanding and will become the home to EA’s European customer service needs. Basically this means that it will be general EA use and not strictly SWTOR support. They will offer support from this facility to all of EA’s major titles. They have dropped the BioWare Ireland name and will be hiring more than 300 new employees over the course of the next few months. The Irish Government looks at this as a good opportunity for job growth and is supportive of the expansion and what video games can do for their economy and job force.
Peter Moore Gives BioWare Vote of Confidence
BioWare has had a challenging year of ups and downs. There has been a lot of criticism of BioWare after the launch of Star Wars: The old Republic. In fact, the last 18 months have been rocky for BioWare. First, there was the disappointing release of Dragon Age 2 and then SWTOR did not perform as well as predicted and finally, there was the drama over the ending of Mass Effect 3. So it’s safe to say this has been a challenging year to year and a half for BioWare. However, this doesn’t mean the company has sunk. They are still a leader in the industry and Peter Moore, EA COO, has a lot of confidence in the future of BioWare. Eurogamer reports: BioWare has called on player feedback as it creates Dragon Age 3, released free downloadable content to add context to the divisive Mass Effect 3 ending, and…
Is Electronic Arts Up for Sale?
Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq:EA) is “quietly exploring” opportunities for it to be sold to private equity firms, according to a report by the New York Post. According to these reports, EA is talking to two different potential companies about a sale. Both are private equity companies- KKR & Co. L.P (NYSE: KKR) and Providence Equity Partners, a major shareholder in ZeniMax Media, an EA competitor. So what does this mean for EA? Honestly, it’s too early to tell. One source said “it’s early days” for any deliberation but then another source said that EA has “made it known they’d do a deal at $20 a share.” Either way, we’re basing all of this on rumor and not on any solid facts at this time. EA’s stock has struggled a bit lately, dropping 37% in the past year. However, they are still a leader in the industry and some might say that drop is just a…