EA Refrains From Sharing Battlefield 2042 Sales Numbers But Acknowledges “Disappointing” Reception
EA has acknowledged that the launch of Battlefield 2042 did not meet the company’s expectations, despite the ambitious plans of the game’s development team.
The publisher’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, and CFO, Blake Jorgensen, both agreed on this during EA’s most recent financial earnings call with investors.
“We did have a challenge in Q3 as the launch of Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations”, Wilson said. “Battlefield 2042 was always an ambitious game and our teams pushed to innovate across many dimensions including massive scale and 128-player matches, new modes, new dynamic gameplay, and more.”
The CEO added, “Developing this game with our teams working from home for nearly two years ultimately proved to be challenging. Through our processes for testing and preparation, we believed the experience was ready to be put into our players’ hands. We launched with strong stability, however, as more players experienced the full game, it became clear that we are up and — unanticipated performance issues that we would need to address.
Some of the design choices we made with the game also did not resonate with everyone in our community. We are fully committed to realizing the full potential of this game and fully committed to our Battlefield fans. We have already implemented a series of major updates to the game, and there is more to be done.”
CFO Blake Jorgensen agreed with Wilson’s statement on the rather “tough” launch of the game.
“Sales of Battlefield 2042 were disappointing, but they are offset by a strong showing from FIFA and continued strength from Apex and our other franchises”, he told investors.
Farther in the conference call, the executives were asked about actual sales numbers for the shooter, but the duo refrained from sharing these.
“Unfortunately, I’m sure I won’t get as much skin as I would like”, Jorgensen said when asked about units sold in the last quarter. “But we’re going to refrain from trying to give updates there. Remember, Battlefield is less than 10% of our revenue. We sold less units than we thought we would.”
Last month, we already reported that EA is planning to make some elements within the game free-to-play following disappointing initial sales.
Battlefield 2042 is available globally now for PC and consoles.
