Publisher Electronic Arts performed quite well during its third fiscal quarter 2020 (ending December 31, 2019). The company reported its financial results for that time frame, with highlights including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order surpassing 8 million units sold, and The Sims 4 reaching 20 million unique players worldwide. The company also earned nearly $1 billion from microtransactions in its games during the holiday quarter last year.
As noted by the chart below, EA enjoyed a year over year growth of 27% from microtransactions, earning $993 million during its third fiscal quarter 2020. Of that, $317 million was profit, a 16% growth YoY. Some of the company’s most prominent live service games include FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL, and Apex Legends. In the past 12 months, EA earned $2.835 billion from microtransactions alone. This is an increase in over $800 million in revenue when compared to the same time period in fiscal year 2018 (ending December 31, 2017). As the data shows, the company is steadily earning more from microtransactions each year. (Editor’s Note: It should also be noted that revenue from full game downloads are on the rise while mobile revenue has been shrinking.)
The company did succeed in other avenues, like exceeding expectations with Jedi: Fallen Order—a strictly single-player game with no additional microtransactions. Even though the company had infamous missteps with games like Star Wars: Battlefront II, a game notorious for its microtransactions before it even launched, it has also seen ongoing success with others like FIFA and Apex Legends. It seems being transparent with what your money will get you is the key to keeping the community happy.
It’s uncertain how the success of microtransactions will impact EA’s future games, but it’s probably not a long shot to say the monetization practice isn’t going anywhere.
[Source: EA via GameSpot]
