Despite Gamestop saying Star Wars Battlefront didn’t sell above its expectations, EA still feels the game is still on track to sell over 13 million units worldwide.
Seeking Alpha attended the recent EA conference call and Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse asked Peter Moore (EA’S COO) if Star Wars Battlefront is selling to the company’s expectations. Ju brought up the fact that Gamestop said the game was under-performing.
Moore gave this answer in response: “So what to Steven is referring to a comment made by the COO of Gamestop, Tony Bartel as part of their earnings call on Monday morning regarding early take on Star Wars Battlefront, which is obviously a temple title for us in this quarter and for the fiscal year and in fact beyond. The comments were interesting and little bit of a surprise to us particularly as the CFO in the call then started to correct the COO as the call went on.
So from our perspective I’m here to reaffirm our guidance of 13 million units sold in for the fiscal year. There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title and I want everybody understand that based on where we think this title is and based on the marketing beats ahead of us in particular the movie launch over the next two weeks we feel very comfortable we’re going to hit the guidance that we’ve given analysts, investors and Wall Street alike.”
It’s interesting that Moore feels there is no weakness in terms of how the game has been marketed so far. He’s correct that the upcoming release of Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens will increase awareness for the game. It will be interesting to see how many copies the game actually sells in its lifetime.
