Star Wars: Battlefront pre-orders "extremely strong", EA expects another boost after gamescom
EA released its Q1 fiscal year 2016 financial report today, and during the call to investors, the firm said it's three new and original IP announced at E3 2015 are on slate for Q4 2016.
CEO Andrew Wilson noted the new titles in the works, but it will be a while before they are released. Fiscal year 2016 doesn't end for EA until March 31, 2016. These new and original IP launching in Q4 FY16, such as Unravel, have been announced previously. You can have a look at the firm's slate in the second slide below.
More information on the Star Wars game in the works with Jade Raymond and Amy Hennig at Visceral Games will be announced on a later call. EA didn't say which call or when an official announcement would be made.
The company reiterated it was confident Star Wars: Battlefront would meet its November 17 launch date, and pre-orders have been "extremely strong" for the title. The boost in pre-order sales was attributed to E3 2015 and COO Peter Moore said he expects another pre-order boost following gamescom 2015 next week, where there will be 200 game stations set up for fans to try the game out.
The firm also noted Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline players logged over 170 million online gameplay hours combined during the period. Wilson also reiterated that the next Battlefield title would be released during holiday 2016. Four out of five copies of Hardline were sold on current-gen consoles.
FIFA 15 players also played more than 16 million matches during the same timeframe. FUT revenues were down, but performance was better than expected. EA doesn't expect the coin selling issues which plagued FUT 15 to be an issue with FIFA 16.
EA expects the install base for PS4 and Xbox One to hit 49 million by the end of the 2016 fiscal year worldwide. Hardware install rate is up 44% on Xbox One and PS4 for EA compared to the same period for last-gen. The firm's software attach rate is 6.1 vs 5.9 for last-gen during the same console release period taking into account bundles, physical and digital offerings.
More Sims 4 copies were also sold during Q1 than the prior period. EA did not shed any color on unit sales or revenue.
CEO Andrew Wilson stated that EA was "investing appropriately" in virtual reality and that it has "incubation" projects in the works testing various tech. It wants to make sure whatever it creates for such tech is a proper experience for fans, but Wilson had nothing to share on these projects at this time.
Monthly active mobile users averaged more than 150 million for the quarter.
For the quarter, digital net revenue came in at $623 million compared to $536 million year-over-year. Packaged goods and other net revenue was down year over year to $580 million compared to $678 million in Q1 FY15.
Total net revenue for the company for Q1 was $1.2 billion, a figure which is slightly lower and rather flat with the same quarter last year. Net income reported was $442 million compared to $335 million year-over-year.
