Star Wars Battlefront II physical sales down 60% compared to Battlefront reboot

Apologies for bludgeoning an equine carcass that has already been pulverized beyond recognition, but this latest news is worth a mention: according to Eurogamer.net, Star Wars Battlefront II physical sales is down 60% on Battlefront 1.

Wow. I mean, it is possible that the 60% drop could be compensated through digital sales gain, but since the first game only came out in 2015, I kind of doubt it. Plus, I suspect the microtransactions story getting exposure in mainstream press has something to with this drop.

I have to say, I'm quite impressed. Internet outrage actually worked for once. Now excuse me while I go do another celebratory dance in response to EA's latest misfortune.

Edit: As @quadknight has so kindly pointed out, this is UK numbers only. Oh well. I suppose we can call this "a good start."

lol

I'll probably still buy it. Gonna give it a couple months tho to see if it crashes in price and/or the microtransactions stay sane or are reintroduced.

Good!!!

Want EA to go bust anyway.

Cool, perhaps it will hit GWG soon and I'll get it free. :P

It funny you know you F*cked up as a company when not only the fans are complaining and boycotting, but another company comes in and says CUT THE SH!T. Disney even came in and say, "look here EA don't you f*ck up our gold mine in Star Wars. We may have copy and pasted Stars Wars episode 4 for Star Wars Episode 7, but at least we gave the fans something good. DON'T you DARE blow this for us."

This is only UK numbers though.

Finally!! Someone else who can see this!!!

Really? (Checks.) Seems you're right. The Eurogamer article just doesn't make this clear.

Oh well, I supposed we can chalk this up as "a good start."

I thought this was common knowledge. I mean, yeah, TFA was a decent movie (as long as I don't think too much about that bloody Starkiller Base! Gah!), but it was obvious right from the first time I saw it that it was basically "A New New Hope."

I mean all EA had to do was just take the original Battlefronts and make them HD. That's all the fans really wanted.

I like Battlefront 2 2017, I think it's a good game, but damn it was 2 steps forward and 3 back with this one. They listened and gave fans a single player campaign, free DLC Maps, and more depth and content, but they screwed it up with the micro transactions.

The game itself is great, far better than the 2015 version, but the lower sales and the bad critics are 100% deserved.

Pay to win is not acceptable in a full priced game, and i still don't get why do DICE keep excludding some of the best Battlefield features from their Battlefront games (64 players, squad system, jump in/ou vehicles, medic abilities, etc)!?

Well, people have been measuring the fail or success of a game with UK numbers only for quite some time now... wich is quite moronic

Hard to say if this really means anything or not. Anyway I don’t want EA to go bust or anything, just want them to continue to make great games and ratchet down the greed a notch or two.

Pay to win/grind to win has no place in online shooters.

It should all come down to skill, knowing map layouts and knowing what weapons to use. Just giving people better starcards or better weapons based on grinding, paying or luck is entirely fvcked up.

I hope this game flops really hard.

Eurogamer.net should have made that clear. Anyway, I would like to see whether sales in other regions of the world are similar to the UK.

That's the single most regurgitated, lazy, and unimaginative "argument" as to why Episode 7 was bad. You're not special for "seeing" that.

The game isn't "great" either. It's plagued with the same terrible issues in multiplayer the first one had. Massive amounts of grenade and broken ability spam that completely removes any competitive element from the game. The single-player is also outright bad. Not even medicore, just bad.

For the record, you can have competitive elements in a casual game. Keeps things from getting annoying and completely random. Taking control away from users just so you can artificially boost others is not good.

@Archangel3371: I'd like EA to START making great games. Star Wars BF 1 was awful, the gameplay was so bad and disappointing. Mass Effect Andromeda was an epic embarrassment. Battlfield 1 was the same old same old. I think the last EA game I enjoyed was NCAA Football, and that was basically the same game every year. Spore in 2008 was something different and a good time for awhile. I take that back, I did enjoy Dragon Age Inquisition, even though many others thought it was garbage.

I haven't played the campaign yet. Will finish SOMA first.

I agree with your points, and would love to see a hardcore (one hit kill, minimal hud, etc) mode. Even though it's fun, and i love the 3 eras content we have this time.

That's the only major improvement I can think of, when I'm comparing Battlefront I & II: that they included maps from all three eras.

SOMA is frikkin' amazing dude, I don't even like horror games, but it's one of the best stories in video games if I gotta be honest :)

Lol, I'm glad someone else said THIS.

Except it's not EA that makes any of the games. They just tug the reigns of the developers who do the real work, to steer them in the direction they want. It's DICE, Bioware, Respawn, Criterion, and Visceral who are actually needed to make the games, not EA. Let's give the credit where it actually belongs. And there's always other publishers who can provide the studios a platform to create their art.

So let's dispel this illusion that EA is "needed" for us to have the games we want, making them a necessary evil we just have to put up with. Because without them we will still get our Star Wars and Mass Effect and Battlefield and Need for Speed and Titanfall and of course aaaaaaall the sports series.

While EA would like us to believe they're necessary, if anything they're just a parasite draining the creativity of studios that's more detrimental to our gaming experience than "necessary" to it. While we all have our cherished game titles that we want to see a continued future for, that doesn't equate to EA's continued presence, a presence we can and would be better off without.

Yeah, I always thought the stories being similar showed how life goes through cycles and history tends to repeat itself in some ways. That and it provided a solid connection from the original movie to the new ones that Disney plans on.

Yep, that and the class system.

I'm about 5 hours into SOMA, so far, so awesome! If you like these slow paced story driven games, i would also recomend Firewatch, Gone Home and Life is Strange.

Good. That's the only form of communication they understand.

@AdobeArtist: My mistake, I meant that I want EA to continue to publish great games.

They've handled this whole situation terribly, so it's well deserved. Having micro-transactions is all well-and-good, but they just went overboard.

They said something similar about Destiny 2 but it also broke PSN sale records in its opening. In this case, here is a game that was made available early for people who bought the $80 version of the game digitally. I don't think it'd be too far of a stretch to think this might have played a part in its physical sales performance. Then again, maybe it is down overall. There's a good bit of holiday release competition this year, and it's stronger than previous years.

But why EA? Just because they currently have the hold and that's the way it's been for a long time? (varying by title) They've shown their true colors time and again. Like I said, it wouldn't be the end of the world, nor the end of great franchises if EA went under, and after all this shit it's past time. Let go this dependency on them, shift the perception that separates studios from publishers, that they aren't conjoined twins.

EAHBO

Regardless, I still say that EA's Battlefront II goes on to sell more than EA's Battlefront and Pandemic's Battlefront II. The pay-to-win star card business scheme was dumb, but overall the game is great. Think about it, it literally does everything better than its predecessor and not a little better, much better.

Good.

"Good. That's the only form of communication they understand."

^^^

@AdobeArtist: I don’t have any dependency on them. I’ve enjoyed a number of games that they’ve published in the past and I would like to enjoy more in the future and simply hope that they don’t let greed mess that up.

Ah yeah I remember the Battlefront launch. My GameStop was packed, me waiting around in line. Everyone's all buying Battlefront, I get up to the counter.

"Halo 5 please"

oohhhhh yeeaaaaaaaaaah

Life is strange was great, but SOMA for me was a mind altering experience. It really made me think about what it means to be human (robots having some real internal conflicts, thinking they are human) and what it means to be stuck in your current form, what it means to have this single 'shell' that you are and that you use your entire life.

My written vocabulary is probaly too limited to explain what I really mean but... SOMA really made me think about stuff, that game was very emotional !

I still have to play Firewatch and Gone Home :)

Yet, it is still number 2 in the UK charts... weird.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/270304/star-wars-battlefront-ii-debuts-in-2nd-on-the-uk-charts/

Everybody that bought it digital refund it.

Avoid using VGChartz.com it is known as an unreliable source.

battlefront 2 has a 0.8 on metacritic lol

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/star-wars-battlefront-ii

This is not true- they do give estimates on games, but they do update their numbers with the correct numbers when they are released. Far from unreliable.

100% this.

First game was bad and the sequel has a lot of negative hype. Doesn't surprise me that they are not fooling as many people.

The only thing to celebrate is that EA listened and made some adjustments. I have no interest in this game, but I've been hearing nothing but praise over the weekend from my friends who just tell me its incredibly fun and addicting.

I dont want to celebrate a high profile blockbuster crashing and burning at launch because I enjoy this hobby and those types of games. I hope the fans get what they want out of it and dont let all the negativity get to you - it comes with the territory now with nearly every high profile game release, if its not lootboxes, its going to be something else.

Don't write that off as a footnote, the UK is the worlds 5th largest gaming market (larger than Korea - edited as I originally said Japan). It wouldn't be particularly shocking if this 60% drop was representative of the over all figure.

Isn't this Destiny in a nutshell?

Anyway, good to see that sales are down. Hopefully EA, and others, get the message loud & clear.

To say EA doesn't make games would be akin to Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo doesn't make games. So, EA is not funding those studios? If EA goes bellies up it would be better for those studios? I know its cool to hate on EA but there should be a time where reason would step in at some point.