I don't think people understand how significant hitting the holiday season means for these companies. This was back years ago but I remember listening to one podcast and I dev said something like it's better to be the 5th best selling game of November than the best selling game in February. People spend a lot of money during the holidays. It's a big deal when a company misses. It's a difficult decision to delay a game into another year despite how easy some people think it is to do.
Maybe many years ago where getting those copies on launch month was majority of the revenue. Getting on the shelf for the holiday season was the payday regardless of quality.
• Getting the game right, the service based game where you keep selling skins and passes for 1-3 years after release, seems to be like a winning strategy. Short term revenue spike vs revenue spread across many months/years.
• EA keeps touting their sub numbers, who are evergreen customers regardless of season.
• Getting a month's long window where no other direct competitor cuts in with marketing/twitch/media presence is great.
• We have breakout hits during seemingly random periods of time, like Valheim, Apex or Valorant. The audience is always there, waiting for the next big game.
I have listed the steps how BFV did this very same feat, racing to the holiday season regardless of quality or live-service, and failed miserably.
EA can keep selling their sports game to the goldfish fans, this is their holiday season payday, the game can be copy-paste from last year and it will still be 3rd or 4th best selling game of the year. This is just not going to work out with new IPs, Battlefield or Titanfall - you gotta be competitive and deliver good experience with those games.
