EA Q4: Battlefield 3 Premium pulls $120 million in revenue
Electronic Arts has announced its Q4 and fiscal year 2013 financials with the news Battlefield 3 Premium has over 3.5 million subscribers to-date, and generated over $120 million in revenue through the March quarter.
EA said that SimCity moved over 1.6 million units since launching in March, and that approximately 50% of sales came from digital downloads.
Labels president Frank Gibeau said SimCity had a "challenging" launch due to the rush of players on its servers. Said the firm " learned our lesson," and that such a thing "will not happen again."
"SimCity [is] a great game that has recovered from a challenging launch," he said. "The short explanation for the launch is that the initial rush of consumers overwhelmed our gaming service, disrupting the consumer experience. As we stabilized the game and improved service in the first week, fans continued to pour in.
"So far, we are ahead of forecast, with more than 1.6 million units sold through to customers. The digital story is particularly strong, nearly 50% of those sales were high-margin digital downloads. The key takeaway here, SimCity is a highly resilient global franchise with a long service life in front of it, but we learned our lesson and are now building better processes to anticipate that service demand.
"This will not happen again."
FIFA 13 sold through over 14.5 million units in FY 2013, a 30% increase versus FIFA 12 in the prior year and digital net revenue for the title topped $200 million in FY 2013 - a 94% increase versus FIFA 12 the prior year.
Total digital net revenue for FIFA generated nearly $350 million in FY 2013 through EA Sports, FIFA Online and FIFA World Class Soccer.
The Simpsons: Tapped Out was one of the top-5 grossing iOS game during the March quarter, generating almost $10 million in digital net revenue through the quarter, and sales totaling almost $50 million since launching in August 2012.
Real Racing 3, the number one racing title on iOS, has over 30 million downloads, and has averaged over 2.5 million daily active users since launching in March.
EA's games and services for mobile and handheld digital revenue generated $104 million in the quarter, a 21% year-over-year increase in digital net revenue. The firm's Origin platform now boasts 47 million users, including 20 million mobile users.
The firm also reiterated that it will develop and publish new Star Wars titles through a new deal with Disney.
"EA and Disney have signed an agreement to create a number of games on the Star Wars franchise," said EA labels president Frank Gibeau. "Our agreement unlocks a whole new future of Star Wars games that will span consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile, and more."
"We are not releasing details about the games today, but some of our most renowned and innovative creative teams are working on ideas," said Gibeau. "The new games may borrow from films but will be entirely new stories and new gameplay powered by our Frostbite 3 engine."
DICE and Visceral will produce new games in the franchise, according to Gibeau along with "BioWare which is already developing for the Star Wars franchise."
Whether this statement referred to SWTOR or a new game from Bioware, we're unsure.
External and internal candidates for CEO are being still being considered, according to interim CEO and executive chairman Larry Probst.
Gibeau said the firm will reveal next-gen titles in development for FY14 at E3. So expect to hear more information on Battlefield 4, FIFA, Madden, NBA Live and more during the June event.
“We plan to unveil new titles from DICE, EA Sports, Bioware, and other new games,” he said, adding that Frostbite 3 and the firm's "new sports engine" will be revealed at E3 as well.
“This world class tech is powering all of our development on the new systems,” he said. “It provides an enduring common technology for our developers which saves cost, fosters efficiency, and provides spectacular physics and graphics for our games.”
According to EA, it was the number one publisher in Western retail markets in the March quarter, and the number one global publisher in the iOS game market for FY 2013.
"As we enter a new fiscal year, EA is well-positioned for dynamic growth on next generation consoles, PCs, and mobile platforms," said executive chairman Larry Probst.
"With world-class games, a rapidly growing digital business, and top-notch creative talent, we are excited about EA's strategy for FY 2014 and beyond."
Total profits for Q4 ending March 31 was $323 million, down compared to the $400 million generated during the same period in 2012.
Total revenue for FY13 was $3.8 billion, down from $4.14 billion in 2012, but profits were up to $98 million, compared to $76 million year-over-year.
Digital net revenue hit $453 million, up from $419 million year-over-year.
On the subject of the company's recent lay-offs and rumored restructuring, CFO Blake Jorgensen confirmed 10% of the publisher's global staff had been cut, with an expected severance cost total of $16 million. A 10% reduction in staff would put the number of redundancies at approximately 900.