EA "bullish" about 10 million PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sales by April 2014

EA has said it expects Microsoft and Sony to ship 10 million Xbox One and PlayStation 4 units before the end of the financial year on March 31, 2014.

"When I talked to our friends at both Sony and Microsoft," said EA chief operating officer Peter Moore in a Q&A session following its Q2 financials, "and I'm trying to get some indications in the numbers that are going to be available for sale by the end of our fiscal year on March 31 and I aggregate them, I think I can squint and see 10 million units combined, very easily."

"Both Sony and Microsoft are proposing that this could be their best launches ever as regards their production numbers and their ability to globalize this business quickly. So we feel bullish about our ability [...] of having five truly next-gen titles available for that."

Moore added that he expects to see an attach rate--the number of games people buy with their consoles--of about three games to each unit of hardware sold. "As regards to attach rates, we typically, as you know, see maybe three titles per unit. And depending on how aggressive bundling goes on with the first parties, but I don't see any indication that there would be any less than that right now, from what we're seeing and hearing from our retail partners."

"So I think overall, we feel very bullish. We've got the right product at the right time. We have not had some of the problems some of our fellow publishers in the industry have been getting. Our quality titles are ready for next-gen. We feel, as we've said on previous earning calls, we're well ahead of this transition and we're going to nail it," Moore concluded.

EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen also added his opinion. "We'll be putting out 5 next-gen titles this quarter," he said. "We'll have a better feeling for how quick the uptake is and what the attach rate is to those. And we believe things like Battlefield will do extremely well in next-gen. But we also understand that the market's going to take time to build. And so our forecast for full year assumes relatively low next-gen, uptick of our core business."

Microsoft will launch the Xbox One on November 22. Sony's PlayStation 4 will be released on November 15 in North America, and November 29 in Europe.