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EA: We are doubling down on live services and core franchises

Deeke

Deeke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
966
United States
EA just posted its Q2'20 earnings and they're pretty good.

The publisher jammed together three of big sports titles in the same quarter (Madden 20, FIFA 20, and NHL 20) and reaped rewards from their combined live services. Live service earnings are up 50% YoY to $493 million and represent 62% of total digital net bookings for the quarter.

Thanks to this success, EA says it will "double down on live services and core franchises." Not necessarily live services in core franchises, but that seems to be hinted at too.

Some highlights:

• The number of FIFA Ultimate Team unique players increased 22% year-over-year.
• The number of Madden Ultimate Team unique players increased 19% year-over-year.
• Apex Legends has had 70 million players life to date.
• The Sims 4 monthly average players are up more than 40% year-over-year.

From a press release:

"The strong results this quarter illustrate the power of our live services and our core franchises. Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4 and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations," said COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen.

"Looking ahead, we are doubling down on live services combined with our core franchises. We're investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond."
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Wonder if this is more evidence that Dragon Age 4 and the new Mass Effect game will have mTX/live services? Or if it's just the sports games that'll stay monetized the way they are?

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adumb

adumb

Banned
Aug 17, 2019
548
Excited to double down on not buying EA games going forward. Graph to come.
 
BloodHound

BloodHound

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,015
Curious to know how BFV is doing. Seems like they plan on continuing to invest in it for quite some time.
Very curious to know what they will have on day 1 of Next Gen.
 
McNum

McNum

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,195
Denmark
Sims 4 is up 40%? Huh.

I suppose that makes sense since the game has become a lot better than it was at launch, and the latest game packs and expansions have pretty much been in complete wish fulfillment mode for the playerbase, but still... That's a lot of growth.
 

Deleted member 135

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dred

dred

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,533
I just want every person out there who has ever purchased a card pack in Ultimate Team to know... You're kind of the worst.
 

HockeyBird

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,600
Of course they are. Service games make a ton of money. Some people were foolish to think that the industry would reverse course because two Ubisoft games and Anthem were below expectations.
 
AshGambit

AshGambit

Member
Sep 4, 2019
72
Well, I don't play sports games. Anthem was terrible. BioWare isn't the same. The only studio they have I like games from is Respawn and I can wait to play Fallen Order.
 

Deleted member 58846

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dred said:
I just want every person out there who has ever purchased a card pack in Ultimate Team to know... You're kind of the worst.
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I don't know why we take issue with that audience being serviced by EA (and apparently well). EA no longer has the clout or influence to direct the rest of the industry, so other games continue to be unaffected by their strategy. EA's players are clearly happy with what EA is doing, and EA is successful at what it does.

It's a win/win all around. Unless you care for old EA IP (which I do, but I've made my peace).
 
Lowrys

Lowrys

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,410
London
The only EA games I enjoy now are Dragon Ages games, so I hope they consider that a core franchise. Can't believe how badly they fucked Mass Effect.

Looking forward to seeing if Fallen Order is good though.
 
freakybj

freakybj

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,428
I don't mind well done live service games, but I hate that they are making everything a live service. All this means to me is they figured out how to make more money by producing less video games which is a shame.
 

Deleted member 3010

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10,974
Will continue not buying any of their games.

It's fascinating and also sad how people keep spending money into these though.
 
Asbsand

Asbsand

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Oct 30, 2017
9,901
Denmark
Nice to hear they're letting Respawn create their last single player game. They probably figured that would cool the flames a bit before resuming the usual bullshit.
Deeke777 said:
Wonder if this is more evidence that Dragon Age 4 and the new Mass Effect game will have mTX/live services?
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Of course, but one could hope they still have dedicated multiplayer and so the MTX implementation won't feel like it's intrusive to the world-building which is the friggin point of those games.
 
dred

dred

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,533
The One Who Knocks said:
I don't know why we take issue with that audience being serviced by EA (and apparently well). EA no longer has the clout or influence to direct the rest of the industry, so other games continue to be unaffected by their strategy. EA's players are clearly happy with what EA is doing, and EA is successful at what it does.

It's a win/win all around. Unless you care for old EA IP (which I do, but I've made my peace).
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I used to be a diehard FIFA fan before Ultimate Team devoured all of the development resources year in and year out.
 
Qwark

Qwark

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,034
Gross, I hate EA's sports game and ultimate team nonsense.

It's weird, but I miss EA from like 2005-2013-ish. They made a hell of a lot of good games in that timeframe.
 

Deleted member 8196

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,859
jdmonmou said:
I don't mind well done live service games, but I hate that they are making everything a live service. All this means to me is they figured out how to make more money by producing less video games which is a shame.
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Not everything.
EA Originals games are not "Live Service" and they are releasing a single player game without "Live service" elements in 2 weeks.
 

ChrisJSY

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,056
HockeyBird said:
Of course they are. Service games make a ton of money. Some people were foolish to think that the industry would reverse course because two Ubisoft games and Anthem were below expectations.
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Personal belief here, but I think Live Service games as we can see are getting pretty stale, while they do make a ton of money I think we can already see examples above of people getting tired of it. It's hard to enjoy all the games out there some may want to play when they all want more from you. This fatigue could bite them in the ass.

Feels like a phase we all want to get through.

Problem is what next, Ubisoft is blaming performance on the players/release date instead of just owning up to it.
Anthem was just, you know, shit.
FO76 I guess made an initial big impact and somehow is still scamming people into spending money on broken ideas.

This will take years to play out and I hope they don't kill of franchises because of it.
 
StraySheep

StraySheep

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,296
criteriondog

criteriondog

I like the chili style
Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,174
Burnout better be a core franchise. I'll take a sequel to Paradise or a brand new IP from CriterionGames.
 
LumberPanda

LumberPanda

Member
Feb 3, 2019
6,365
EA has been giving the people what they want and it's been a great strategy for them.
ChrisJSY said:
Personal belief here, but I think Live Service games as we can see are getting pretty stale, while they do make a ton of money I think we can already see examples above of people getting tired of it. It's hard to enjoy all the games out there some may want to play when they all want more from you. This fatigue could bite them in the ass.

Feels like a phase we all want to get through.

Problem is what next, Ubisoft is blaming performance on the players/release date instead of just owning up to it.
Anthem was just, you know, shit.
FO76 I guess made an initial big impact and somehow is still scamming people into spending money on broken ideas.

This will take years to play out and I hope they don't kill of franchises because of it.
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I don't know if I'd say "people are tired of it" from a couple of posts on this forum. It'd be like concluding that people are tired of the MCU because a number of directors said they don't like the MCU.
 
ArmGunar

ArmGunar

PlayStatistician
Member
Oct 30, 2017
6,527
No mention of EA Access launch on PS4
Maybe it didn't meet their expectations ?
 
Unknownlight

Unknownlight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 2, 2017
10,585
How are they planning to double down further than they already have? Make sports games and nothing else?
 
adumb

adumb

Banned
Aug 17, 2019
548
Seik said:
Will continue not buying any of their games.

It's fascinating and also sad how people keep spending money into these though.
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Some people use video games as a means of deleting time, rather than actually enjoying them in any meaningful sense. That's who live services are for.
 

Deleted member 17184

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I wouldn't go as far as to say literally every game they make will have live services. I mean, they're about to release a game that's completely singleplayer with no MTX whatsoever. And, as far as the terminology goes, The Sims 4 is also a live service game with its expansions. I don't think this means that Dragon Age 4 will be structured like Anthem, for example. At the end of the day, EA still wants profits, and they know the multiplayer section of Dragon Age Inquisition didn't work out. In fact, if you look at the current job listings for the Dragon Age team, none of them mention multiplayer.
 
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