Electronic Arts had news to boast about for Star Wars: Battlefront during its fiscal year 2016 financial results. The PS4, Xbox One, and PC shooter bested already raised sales expectations to hit the 14 million units sold mark and a sequel is on the way in 2017.
The publisher originally targeted 10 million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront being sold. It then upped the ante to 13 million units during an investors conference call in October 2015.
“We feel very good about 13 million units,” EA chief operating officer Peter Moore said at the time.
Obviously, not good enough as the publisher reported 14 million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront were “sold-in.” This is the number of copies sold to retailers, not to consumers. The game also expanded the number of new players in the EA ecosystem by more than 15 percent.
The tie-in with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens obviously benefited Battlefront greatly. Electronic Arts is going to continue this pairing in 2017. The publisher announced a sequel to the shooter is coming in 2017 during its earnings call with investors. The game will feature content from the new movies. Star Wars: Episode VIII is set to release on December 15, 2017.
Obviously, DICE is going to be extremely busy with this announcement. It is currently supporting the current Battlefront release with DLC early into 2017. Additionally, the developer just announced Battlefield 1 for October 2016 and has Mirror’s Edge Catalyst set for release in June.
It will be interesting to see how the studio addresses complaints about its first effort on the Star Wars: Batlefront franchise. The lack of space battles was a sore point among fans along with a missing single-player campaign. Sparse content at launch was also a common touch point. A mix of free and paid DLC has beefed up the in-game activities and maps, but some good will has been lost with fans of the original entries published by LucasArts.
