Battlefield V’s ginormous sales will have most publishers green with envy, but EA is disappointed with the performance of the title. And speaking to investors overnight, overlord Andrew Wilson explained that DICE’s decision to prioritise single player over the sequel’s unreleased Battle Royale mode may have played a part in the release’s subpar commercial situation.
“We made the decision to prioritise other features, including a single player experience at launch, over a Battle Royale mode,” he said when explaining the game’s underperformance. “Unfortunately, the later release date meant the game launched deeper into a competitive holiday window where heavy price discounting was a big factor.”
Battle Royale is still slated to come to Battlefield V in the near-future, but EA released free-to-play first-person shooter Apex Legends earlier this week, which will likely compete directly with Firestorm for players. Still, you can’t really argue with Wilson’s comments: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 controversially canned single player, and has been a huge seller.
[source trustedreviews.com]
Comments 67
This is what happens when their only bothered about more "growth" then any kind of profit.
Also with them releasing a Battle Royale mode in BFV aren't they pretty much providing competition for themselves?
Maybe because Battlefield 1's SP is one of the most boring fps I've ever played, even though I have all the trophies except the online ones. Funny I tend to platinum games I don't really like, like Deus Ex MD lol. I'd take Fallout 4 as the best fps campaign over Titanfall 2, DOOM, B1, Deus Ex etc any day.
We can hate on EA all day but Wilson's not wrong here. I have no doubt whatsoever that BFV would have performed better had it shipped with its battle royale mode rather than its WWII stories.
I mean, you just have to look at Black Ops 4, as the article says.
SiNgle PLaYerS gAmES aRe DeAD says the multi-million dollar company that produces games riddled with loot boxes, micro transactions, maybe finish your games, and release a better product?
Meanwhile.. God of War, Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn etc etc continue to sell and will be remembered as being great console games
Causing controversy with pointless social justice nonsense probably didn't help.
in case your wondering EA, THE ISSUE IS YOU AND YOUR HOSTILE, MONEY GRUBBING PRACTISES, reliance on Lootboxes & doing the absolute bare minimum effort
BFV failed because of what you did to Star Wars Battlefront 2 NOT because the game had a single player or no Battle Royale mode
That's what happens when you have those silly blue face paints on characters. Not cool.
@ShogunRok it may have performed better but the truth is that people are finally getting tired of the EA nonsense and it finally begins to affect sales.
blaming SP is just them being blind to their own errors and it will kill their sales more and more until they are forced to get new managment.
they clearly are out of touch with everything and follow money making trends despite being proven that even that doesn't always work out well. and it turns out it begins to fail for them aswell.
plus their arrogant statements are not helping either.
Taking out of the equation that 7 million+ copies of the game were sold (a number many companies would love) I find this hilarious considering how bad the pre-release PR was including but not limited to 'you don't like what we're offering, don't buy it' and then there's the fact that many single player games are finding plenty of success. Just proves again how ridiculous EA can be but people still throw money at its games for some insane reason.
Blind hate is preventing people from thinking rationally. It's like ShogunRok said, you can't ignore the success of BR.
If you don't want to look at COD, look at Titanfall 2 BR mode. Over a million downloads in 8 hours.
I would blame the EA logo on the box.
@ThroughTheIris56
Agree with this as well. It's fine for a company to make a social statement with its games if it's done well, EA's attempt was just sad and pathetic and frankly out of touch with what most people who play Battlefield games care about. I'm all for using your platform to get messages out but be intelligent about it.
@naruball but on the other hand many BR games start out great but drop in numbers soon. it's new so ofcourse it will gain traction but as quite a few BR style games have found out, soon after that the players just go back to fortnite and even PUBG.
we can only say if it was succecfull in a few months.
and when it comes to EA and their practices i realy would not call the justified hate blind hate.
that only minimises their terrible practices.
@jdv95 Their arguably terrible practices is one thing. Dismissing anything they say because you don't like them is another.
Whaddaya do?
It probably would have helped them more if they released everything together in one complete package instead of trickle releasing the game.
Let's be real though everyone, BFV still sold over 7 million copies, despite everything. Could it have done better? Most likely, given better marketing and better public perception, but it's still over 7 million. Games that are universally hated simply don't do 7 million copies.
I'm not criticising anyone for hating on EA — yes, some of its business practices are laughably exploitative — but we need to remember that we exist in a hardcore bubble. The more mainstream audience couldn't give a damn about loot boxes, otherwise FIFA wouldn't make EA billions of dollars every year.
That said, you'd think EA would learn from all this and reevaluate its strategy for Battlefield going forward. It feels like the series is definitely on a downward trajectory now.
@ShogunRok "That said, you'd think EA would learn from all this and reevaluate its strategy for Battlefield going forward. It feels like the series is definitely on a downward trajectory now."
that's the root of the problem,they don't learn.
them blaming SP just proves that.
they could have released that BR mode since day 1 with that SP but they did not because that mode was not finished yet but ended up releasing the game anyway because they wanted their money now.
missing content,and a horrible track record that people are finally geting tired off because EA keeps on doing these things is what caused the "low" sales.
I'm guessing trying to rewrite history didn't help matters either.
They released Battlefield V a few weeks after CoD and and one of the most critically acclaimed single player games of all time in RDR2. Both of those games came right after a few other huge games. Not to mention BF launched a few days before RDR online went live. I really do not think it would have done any better even if it was fully prepared to launch, not in that time slot.
The primary potential audience for this game was on overload at the time. What they should have done was release it in January or February instead of insisting on hitting the Holiday target. Looking at sales numbers for games like RE2 and Kingdom Hearts, I absolutely think it would have been better off outside of that crowded window.
They also need to really consider what they think constitutes successful sales numbers. If 7 million is a failure, there is something wrong on a fundamental level. Not everything can be FIFA Ultimate Team and make a billion dollars a year. My morbid curiosity has me interested in seeing how Anthem fairs, because that is absolutely going to fail to meet whatever EA would consider to be successful. I don't want it to be terrible or anything, but EA needs to start making some better decisions.
Honestly though, I think EA needs to cut their losses and just focus on what they do well. That being sports games and whatever mass appeal fair they are doing on PC at the moment.
@FullbringIchigo I honestly don't think SWBF2 had anything to do with it by the time EA brought out Battlefield V people were already past that. Besides with the all DLC free for everyone and no lootboxes announcement for BFV alot of people applauded EA.
What hurt it was no advertising and when the game was released.
EA(and other Big game makers) = CLUELESS! Thank GOD SONY still does AMAZING Single player games
The extremely poor marketing campaign didn't help either. Regular customers got lackluster trailers and that terrible Trever Noah reveal, but press and influencers got a two hour in-depth presentation and extensive hands-on time. Maybe EA should spend less money on wining and dining the press, and instead focus on a more grass-roots marketing campaign.
@Tasuki i dunno the whole Loot Box things is still going on even today so i think it did play some part, there was and still is many people who just don't trust EA anymore
the thing is they are blaming us, the gamers for their own failings, they made mistakes, they were the ones hostile to their users, they were the ones who tried to fleece us for as much as they could
they hurt their own sales by their actions and their attitudes towards us, it had nothing to with what content the game had but they just can't accept they did it to themselves and are blaming everyone and everything else for their failings
@ShogunRok Maybe push the game back and release a complete game instead of barebone thing. My problem with the game there is to little you can only make one first impression. Thats why im a Firstparty fan because they release a finished game and not rush it because its has too release before Christmas in a terrible state. 😔
We will hear stuff like this a lot more excuses to shareholders kinda reminds me of The missing Tesco millions the chief has been cleared but who stole the profits from the shareholders.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EA/holders/?guccounter=1
@Cheski Why not push the game back and release the game in a slower time. So you can push the complete package with all singleplayer content and all modes at once. Im not brilliant but are they so stupid at EA or do the dollar signs impair sights?
How bout the 25 different release dates and segmented content release schedule. The BR part missing launch didnt help but EA ruined this game well before that
@JoeBlogs Yet Titanfall 1 sold better than 2 - at least it had the last time I looked but some heavy discounts may of helped it sell more now.
As for BFv and its 'lacklustre' campaign, I think the fact that it wasn't a 'complete' package at launch was what cost EA sales - not the fact this had a Single Player campaign. At launch the 'Campaign' wasn't finished and you had to wait months for the rest of the 'stories'. Even now, BFv isn't complete with its promised Battle Royale mode still to come.
CoD BO4 may not have had a SP campaign this year BUT it is a 'Complete' release. It was known months before that this wouldn't have a SP campaign.
EA need to understand that they cannot expect to release 'half' a game at Full Price and expect people to buy it in quantity. There is no guarantee that the other half that gets added as and when the devs get around to it will be worth waiting for. I guess that's what you get when you are pressured to release a game every year - alternating between Battlefield and Battlefront!!!
@ShogunRok You must have forgot about the " Don't like it, Don't buy it" situation
Shut up EA. it's because you released an unfinished game and you're one of the most hated publishers around due to your predatory greed with lootboxes and microtransactions and your obvious lack of care for your customers. I can't wait until the starwars franchise goes to someone that will do it justice. But everyone knows you'll never change.
Let's just be honest, this is what happens when you rewrite/bastardise history and claim it's factual, your fans tell you that you got it wrong, and you tell them not to buy your game if they don't like it.
We still like high quality, single-player, story-driven games, and we're happy to buy them. It's just that you haven't produced one since forever.
Wow. Whichever player EA is blaming this on must be absolutely monstrous to singlehandedly tank the game’s sales like they did. It’s almost impressive, really. Almost.
Just going to leave this here:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/02/red_dead_redemption_2_ships_a_crazy_23_million_copies
Lets be honest, it wasnt the multiplayer people were buying into.
Yes battlefield is a different type of series, where multiplayer is more important. But to blame single player for the failings of a release is naive. There are so many issues at play to explain why the game underperformed at retail. I could name a handful without even thinking about it.
But ultimately it is a demonstration thay EA has lost the trust of the market, and until they start working to regain that trust, this is a story that will be repeated ad nausium
@Rob_230 The comparison doesn't make much sense. COD (i.e. a more similar game) clearly shows it's all about multiplayer.
@youreyesonly00 But clearly plenty of people did buy it?
@ShogunRok clearly he wouldn't be complaining if they did..
@ShogunRok EA's horrible marketing of Battlefield V is a thing also, BF1 marketing > BFV
from EA's perspective though, battlefield 3 sold more than 7m retail copies each on PS3 and X360, and BF1 has around 7m retail copies on PS4 alone, 7m across PS4, PC and XB1 is probably not where it was aiming to be, especially since there is no £40 season pass for additional revenue. it's not just BFV though, black ops 4 is not performing near as well black ops 3 or WW2, and that did have a battle royale, but dropped the single player, so..
there's probably a few factors, it had quite a bit of negativity around its reveal, and its entire marketing angle of "the launch is just the beginning" gives the impression that they only developed half a game and the rest is coming later. why did EA think they had to release it before christmas, and couldn't wait til march when the battle royale mode would be done, the rest of the single player war stories would be finished, and co-op missions and another couple of multiplayer maps beside. the drip feeding of content and the uncertainty of when its coming isn't the most enticing prospect, especially if people are of the opinion that the game was only half complete to begin with. quite a few of the reviews i read were of a similar nature.. it had lacked a typical amount of content, had several balancing issues but would be so much better when it became the game it could be.. except that's a familiar story with battlefield.
@JoeBlogs I think Capcom stand a chance of learning from their mistakes but EA seem very blinkered and much more unlikely to learn. Blaming this on the SP (if you can call it that), half finished too, is ridiculous. Granted they may have got a few more sales had they opted to focus on that and opted to ditch their campaign - after all, they haven't done a decent campaign since BFBC2. Jump on another bandwagon. I do think though that a 'half finished' game is not going to sell well - at least until the rest of it arrives and by which time though, the game is 'old news'
@leucocyte didn't we get reports that COD was the best selling game of the year? And that it made a ton of money despite initial reports?
@ShogunRok I think your partly right, but Battlefront 2 was bad enough that I feel like it affected the mainstream a bit. And to be fair, our bubble does provide millions of sales it seems, the sales that were lost in EA’s projection. And Battle Royale might have helped it sell a bit more, but I still question if it would have released “on time” if they had focused on it.
@Rob_230
I don't know. I didn't play the game but the single player story/protagonists they went for didn't seem to be the brightest idea.
Single player yes, but it needs to be good. / appealing to people
@Jaz007
Such a shame that so many gamers were outraged and still are, by a decent game with no MTS at launch at all and totally free dlc.
@naruball - maybe? probably? i would have thought red dead redemption would have been the biggest seller of 2018 though. spiderman sold more copies on PS4 than BO4. don't get me wrong, CoD still sold an enormous amount of copies, like 8m or something on PS4, and it's still performing better than infinite warfare, but when the previous two are 13-15m....
@youreyesonly00 Well yeah, it didn't meet expectations. But it still sold 7 million copies — an amount most games only dream of reaching. It's not like Battlefield is dead.
Considering they ‘focused’ on a single player campaign is was bloody god awful.
Sales are down due to terrible marketing and much if the content (not even including Br) being released after launch because it just wasnt finished. Oh, and it still was not finished even after the game was delayed.
It is now being killed by their live service (1 new map in 6 months). It is so poor that I wish they would bring out some paid DLC and I’m against that. They are intentionally making live service poor so we forgive them for paid dlc, mtx etc
If they:
Launched BFV on time / Didnt have EA as a publisher due to their current reputation / Released it on the same date for all users (some had it 20 days early) / Launched it in the state it is now, without the absolutely game breaking bugs it had / Didn't tell everyone to NOT BUY IT / Included features standard to FPS's for many years, such as rental servers / Had more maps / Didnt drip feed us maps after launch which were due to be launch content / Released a proper live service roadmap / Actually had content for the live service / Had a good single player campaign
If it did all that it would of done just fine. Not much to ask of a AAA game to be honest... In fact the above is pretty much a minimum requirement to be honest.
They prioritized single-player?
They (CoD & BF) have much more competition now when it comes to multiplayer games. I think this is partly a consequence of that.
Should they have focused exclusively on multiplayer content? Probably. 99% of the people who buy these games do it for the multiplayer, is my impression.
I don't think a BR mode would save them either everyone right now it's jumping to that same wandbagon so they would have a lot of competition and not even call of duty can beat Fortnite
@Bonbonetti The 3 hour single player they apparently put t much effort into was an absolute joke. I will never understand how it took 2 years of work, for studios made up of around 400 people to release a game so lacking in both single player and multiplayer.
Things which were standard in their previous games are missing. It is like instead of building on BF1 and improving, they completely started from scratch, went backwards and broke things that they have spent time fixing over their many years of developing.
I've already put over 26hrs into the multiplayer. It's almost on par with what I put into BF1 overall. Having a blast playing. Only downside is majority of my mates don't play it.
Not touched the SP yet but I'm sure it'll be decent.
I'd rather give dice the credit for NOT bowing to the BR fad straight away. It'll have SP, great multiplayer AND a BR mode eventually. Can't say the same about cod and the rest of them.
The game could have done without the SP experience. It's boring and lacklustre. The main reason for the game not doing so well is the lack of content and buggy launch. They are still fixing issues thar should have been ironed out a long time ago.
“We made the decision to prioritise other features, including a single player experience at launch, over a Battle Royale mode”
i.e. they rushed the game. Didn't they say the same thing about SWBF (2015)? Let's be honest, it's never enough. Their game could end up as the best selling game of the year and it would still be a disappointed, because it didn't sell 5 million more copies.
@BAMozzy absolutely. The only reason I didn’t buy the game was because the campaign wasn’t complete. By the time the campaign is complete the market is saturated with so many new releases. so I don’t know if I’ll pick one up until i get the good ol “BF5 IS HOW MUCH!?!? I GOT TO PULL THE TRIGGER NOW!”
7 million copies sold and EA still isn't satisfied with their mountain of money.
The shameless greed of 'triple A' publishers knows no bounds.
Welp. Guess we can kiss Battlefield bad company 3 goodbye
Was it hell it was the fact that the game didn't follow world war 2 that got fans up in arms the fact it didn't launch with half of the modes it had and they were released later on and yet charged full price for the game
Well, duh. I'd rather wait for the game to be complete and by that time it'll be cheaper too. Finish your damn game before you sell it!
It having a single player is a positive thing as that's the reason I didn't pick Blops4 up at launch.
@JJ2 The DLC is the half of the game that didn’t come out with the game because it was rushed.
@Jaz007
You mean like Marvel Spiderman?
Haha dont come at me Im kidding . I know you seem to hate SWBF which is your right after all.
@Jaz007
That makes me think. Just imagine if SWBF dev came up on twitter calling gamers entitled pr## like insomniac did.. Oh boy!
EA "Single player games don't sell"
Rockstar "no, we didn't sell 23,000,000 copies of Red Dead Redemption 2 did we"
The world rolls their eyes at EA.
EA need new management at almost every level, including in some of their development houses.
@Omnicron I sometimes feel that the single-player in some of the BF games are mainly there to serve as "fodder" for trailers, to make the games look good, to look cool. I remember playing and enjoying the single-player in some of the earlier BF games, like the Bad Company series. From what I've played of the later BF games, there's always been a potential to me for a really fun single-player campaign, but they never commit to it, they only go half-way. So it's bizarre to hear them claim they prioritized single-player (among other things).
You can pretend that it was the SP if you like. You can even try and get the message across that people don't want SP anymore, they all want online MP with MT's. The fact of the matter is, the evidence is to the contrary:
I guess people would rather play great online MP titles like Fallout 76 though eh.
I unfortunately bought Black Ops 4. I was playing the demo with my gf ONLY because it had splitscreen. After about 2 weeks after our purchase, neither one of us barely touches it. Why? The "story" training missions stuck with no real depth. The Multiplayer maps are all pretty much uninteresting and no fun to play unless you like dying every 5 seconds. And the BR just gets old. I'll spend 10 minutes scavenging for a rifle and upgrades only to be killed 10 minutes later by some dude camping. Dont get me wrong BR has its replayability especially if you find yourself a good squad but this whole thing of BR being the main focus instead of a compelling story when it should just be a awesome multiplayer mode.
I should also add that despite the political correctness bs surrounding BFV, I was actually more interested in BFV cuz it was going to have sp missions, not very interesting ones apparently. But SPLITSCREEN in bo4 is what won me over...not battle royale. I will never pay full price for a battle royale game again not unless it comes with atleast a decent attempt at a story. I'm sure that's not gonna happen from these two companies anytime soon.
they sound so un gaming this company just cash rules not how can we make something great for players & no SP I would never have bought it. by the way, the SP was not great!
Face palm! If anything that probably helped get the sales up to 7 million. It's because no one likes you EA and you only have yourselves to blame!
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