Battlefield V sells 7.3 million copies; EA blames single player campaign for disappointing sales

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlefield-5-fails-to-meet-sales-targets-and-ea-e/1100-6464832/

The game sold a massive 7.3 million units in the time between launch in November and the end of the year, but this was 1 million short of what EA had projected. As for why the game struggled, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the marketing campaign failed to capture the attention of players. The campaign lacked a "creative center," the company said, though it shared no other details.

Wilson added that the game's delay from October to November hurt Battlefield 5 because it meant that the game was going up against titles already discounted for the holiday season. Not only that, but Battlefield 5 struggled because of "unprecedented competition," Wilson said. He mentioned Fortnite, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Red Dead Redemption 2as titles that ate away at Battlefield 5's sales to some degree.

Not only that, but Wilson suggested that EA's decision to prioritise Battlefield 5's single-player over the new battle royale mode, Firestorm, hurt Battlefield 5's sales. Firestorm is launching in March, and it won't be the first battle royale game from EA, as it just recently launched Apex Legends from Titanfall studio Respawn Entertainment

Your thoughts, SW? Apparently 7.3 million copies wasn't enough for EA.

"EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the marketing campaign failed to capture the attention of players"

the marketing campaign hurt the game, but it certainly didn't fail to capture people's attention lol

EA did straight up said "Don't buy our game" and that's exactly what EA got out of it. So put up or shut the fucks up EA.

I use my EA Premier to play BFV cause I sure wasn't going to pay $60 cause the game was so damn disappointing.

Yeah, DICE has never been great at single player; I don't know why they try to focus on it. They should stick to MP only, because it's what they're good at.

Don't insult customers next time EA.

I'm honestly amazed it sold that much.

He really think BR would have saved it? Foolish.

They said they didn’t want people like me playing their games and told me not to buy it.

That’s terrible marketing, but I did listen to them. Sounds like millions of others felt the same way.

This is the most apt post i've seen... Ever. EA fucked up, and it's on them.

Considering the game is discounted to $30-40 first week I doubt their revenue is high. Good efforts, how much did Battlefield 1 do same timeframe?

EA is ridiculous. Anthem is an online only game even the single player. Now, they released a BR game just to increase their revenues and join the be bandwagon BR because they lack creativity. I just can't wait for their studios to shut down. At least it would stop them from making crappy games and getting a profit out of them.

Has the BR mode of BFV even launched?

@Basinboy: Thats a negative.

Get woke go broke.

That's a rather big number of sold units for something to be a disappointment.

Eventually rehashes burn out. EA has become lazy and pumps out mediocrity regularly. It isnt surprising that they are failing their own expectations.

7.3 Million copies isnt good? What the **** lol

I'm offended not by the woman in the game but by the shallow gameplay this series lost it's way a long time ago. Battlefield 2 will always be the best after 2142 the series went causal and the games lost their appeal.

7.3 million seems like a lot to me, how does this stack up against their usual sales?

@Shmiity: Not for a BF game. They probably forecasted 10+ million sales by now. To put it in perspective, RE2 and kingdom hearts will more than likely pass BF5 in total sales (they both far outpace it), and niether had the benefit of holiday sales.

7.3 million it not so many. It not a fair comparison to older game. Market is much bigger today. 100 million PlayStation 4 + 30 million xbox(a guess) + 15 million pc user. This is 150 million game buyer. Selling 7.3 million copy of big budget game is the low number when potential market it very high.

Switch sell 20 million hybrid console and sell 10 million Smash Bro. It a better ratio and for future sale look good too.

The best BF game was Bad Company 2 so im surprised this franchise doesnt have more serious franchise fatigue

Not sure if I buy the whole singleplayer campaign excuse. I mean, it was a nice addition, but no one really buys this game for the singleplayer.

That's a little frightening that 7+ million copies was not enough for them...

...and this is an even worse thought.

I'd argue if they spent less on marketing, they wouldn't have to sell as many copies to break even. I mean let's be honest here: programmers are cheap; you can find college grads and even experienced programmers looking to build their resume and pay them 45k a year. Most of the money spent on this game probably went to bullshit...like marketing. Do we really need to be told Battlefield is coming out? What day it's available? Do we really need ads on TV, websites, and magazines?

Man I'm getting more upset about this with every word I type.

Less is more, EA! LESS IS MORE!

EA being a joke as always

BO4 really nailed the marketing while BFV was trying to do I dont know what, with all the politically correct high n mighty mumbo jumbo and threats. Just stupid!

Heck, I was tempted so many times to go for BO4 despite being a Battlefield loyalist, and that says something. I did get BFV and enjoy playing it.

EA should have focused their marketing more on how they were doing theaters of war not previously explored in WW2 games, with historic lookbacks, etc. stuff that would've played to the core BFV audience, but what they did was everything their core audience hates. Political correctness for sake of it and making blatant historical inaccuracies toward that end.

@Willy105: @mandzilla: Because EA expected Battlefield V to exceed Battlefield 1 sales as how Battlefield 1 surpassed Battlefield 4 sales. EA blaming the single player campaign is a dumb excuse, it was all on them. Hell, looking at Anthem and how they're marketing it with a staggered release will hurt them more.

What will be EA's excuse if Anthem failed to meet their expectations? It sucks that it has a staggering release.

The marketing was hilarious, i'd love to meet whoever put this thing up lol

lol 7 million is disappoitning?? really EA

titanfall 2 also sold millions yet EA consider it commercial failure. no wonder people are loosing interest in anything EA.

In a world where 7.3M considered a commercial failure. facepalm

How many people have Origin Access Premier? I have. I don't need to buy the game because of that.

Let's see

• Attacked fanbase for being toxic white males - Check
• Pander to people who do not buy or play their games at all - Check
• Told people not do buy the game - Check

Even with those big no's in place EA still claims "it's the single player campaign wot did it!" This only goes to prove that EA do not listen or care about their customers and do not deserve our money.

For those on Origin Access Premier, EA will count all downloads of the full game as "sales". So it's very likely the 7.3 million will include you guys as well.

Ok, people can stop claiming the game is dead now. 7.3 million sales is a lot. Of course it's disappointing compared to Battlefield 1, which was the best selling Battlefield game in a long time.

Marketing for the game was the worst I've ever seen:

-Reveal trailer made early access F2P games look good

-Me and many friends tuned into EA play 2018 just to see Battlefield (same way they showed off Battlefield 1 at EA Play 2016) and it was just glanced over.

-They did nothing to stand out from heavy hitters like COD, RDR 2 and AC

-Too much catering to people that don't even play videogames anyway, and too little catering to core fanbase (purely from marketing, gameplay is fantastic)

Oh, so they still haven't learned?

Battlefield 1 was the best selling game in the franchise. Did better than BF 4 on 3 platforms, while BF 4 was on 5 platforms.

Here are some numbers I got from reddit:

"BF4 sold 7m in 6 months. BF1 sold 10m in its first quarter."

Now BF V sold 7.3 in its first quarter.

We also have to take into account the Origin premier subscriptions, which are on the rise, and which include full access to BF V.

@R4gn4r0k: EA will be including Premier downloads in the total copies. What I'd like to see is the revenue/profit from Battlefield V compared to other games in the franchise as that would be the true indication of success or failure.

Hmmmm, interesting.

What I do know is that Battlefield 1 took DICE 3 years to make, and they did Battlefield V in 2 years (which resulted in a more broken launch)

So going just by that, Battlefield V cost them less to make. I also think they paid less for marketing, because for the longest time they were doing marketing for Battlefield V through influencers (youtubers). And did no marketing of their own.

I'd like a few more maps, and the sp stories were awful....but that aside I'm enjoying bf5. 7 million is an impressive number for a game that got such a hard time from the keyboard warriors..

Too much sold. Hoped for worse. Probably won't push them out of business.

Sucks.

EA says they are going all-in with the live service. Let's hope they bring lots of new maps. I can't expect the same as what Premium offered, but still I hope for it.

embarrassing.. it's like a kid who gets a fancy car for Christmas but is disappointed because they didn't get the Lamborghini.. cry me a river EA

@R4gn4r0k: should I stick to Battlefield 1 or give V a try (when it's cheap)?

If you play Battlefield 1 stick to Operations and Frontlines, those are the standout modes with some spectacular maps and in these gamemodes the teamplay truly shines

_________

Battlefield V does have some great improvements over Battlefield 1, off the top of my head:

-Improved gunplay
-Gameplay is more tactical
-LMGs act like LMGs
-Improved squadplay
-Improved movement system
-Graphics and sound
-Faction specific vehicles: Germans get the Tiger, while British get the Churchill
-Player customization (this is way more fun that I thought it would be)

And I'd also like to mention that I really enjoyed some of the singleplayer portion as well: particularly Tirallieur and The Last Tiger were standout. The Last Tiger is also the first time that a AAA WWII shooter lets you play as the Germans. Yes, we've had 1000s of WW2 singleplayer shooters, but none actually let you play as the Germans. And now EA is blaming singleplayer for the bad sales :(

EA is stupid that they won't actually acknowledge what was the real cause for the drop in sales: the terrible marketing and the catering towards non-gamers whilst also pissing off gamers.

To be fair, I'm actually hype for Anthem and the VIP Demo I got out of, it's really fun but I wouldn't pay $60 for it. Glad it's part of EA Origin Premier because I ain't buying it. I don't wanna see Bioware fail at all.

Sounds about right. I'm one of the view who doesn't have a personal grudge against EA, it's the game I'm more interest even though it has EA stamp on it and I find Origin Premier to be very useful to me however.

No one has ever played Battlefield for the campaign.

Wow you must have some REALLY thin skin, mate haha!

Your second point actually validates the first one.

I bought it, touched it once for SP and haven't been back, menu load times sucked way too much to the point I just don't want to fuss with it, I have since fired up BF1 a few times though. That was a while ago, maybe game has been patched, maybe I will try again when I exhaust myself of interesting things to play, might have to wait though, got RE2 to work on, an Evil Within playthrough of th DLCs, and Metro Exodus coming.

market cap is not even 150m... u are forgetting PC, which is at least 300m?