More than any other major publisher EA appears to be investing heavily in digital, whilst maintaining its ability to deliver AAA titles at retail and online. This strategy appears to working well, as EA has just reported back on some significant year-on-year growth.
“This was another solid quarter driven by both digital and packaged goods,” claimed CEO John Riccitiello. “We saw strong digital revenue growth over the prior year. On packaged goods, NCAA is off to a great start and pre-orders for Battlefield 3 are tracking extremely well.”
Digital goods saw the largest amount of growth, with net income at $232m compared to $176m last year, but packaged goods still made of the majority of EA’s income, with $647m of EA’s net income coming from that source.
Big sellers in the first quarter were Portal 2, which has sold over 2m units, while strong franchises such as FIFA continued to sell in great numbers. The big surprise for me, personally, was the fact that Crysis 2 managed to sell over 3m units.
Leave a Reply