FIFA 18 on Switch accounted for 1% of all UK physical copies sold

[DonFerrari]

Locknuts said:
1% of Fifa sales in the UK is still over 50 million copies so that's not bad.

8k actually.

jonathanalis said:
In some brasilian foruns I participate, people are gerring crazy with these news.
They start a conspiracy that EA is sabotating the nintendo switch.
The arguments:
-EA is decreasing the supply of nintedo switch versions(they see less copies on shelves than ps360 versions).
-EA would say that the version dont sell on switch and would not bring fifa 2019 and other to switch.
-They only made fifa 2018 to comprove that : we tryed, but it dont sell.

Man, too crazy. Im trying to explain that the ps360 is still relevant for fifa, that EA never cared about nintendo consumers opinion on them, and that a company goal is profit, why would they spend money on something they are sabotaging?

 

GhaudePhaede010 said:

jonathanalis said:
In some brasilian foruns I participate, people are gerring crazy with these news.
They start a conspiracy that EA is sabotating the nintendo switch.
The arguments:
-EA is decreasing the supply of nintedo switch versions(they see less copies on shelves than ps360 versions).
-EA would say that the version dont sell on switch and would not bring fifa 2019 and other to switch.
-They only made fifa 2018 to comprove that : we tryed, but it dont sell.

Man, too crazy. Im trying to explain that the ps360 is still relevant for fifa, that EA never cared about nintendo consumers opinion on them, and that a company goal is profit, why would they spend money on something they are sabotaging?

I think the more important question is:

Why would a game that only sold 8,000 copies be sold out anywhere? The only logical answer is: self-sabotage. Trying to figure out why a business does things is futile. Trying to figure out how these numbers fit into context is a far easier endeavor.

No matter how much I want to believe it is something else, if I say I want to sell 8 boxes of peanuts but only have 4 boxes, then of course I can say I never met my sales expectations since I could not possibly reach 8 boxes sold.

Why would any company invest several hundred thousand dollars on self-sabotage? It makes much more sense to guess that they didn't expect much sales for the version seeing like there is still stock in several places.

Metallox said:

jonathanalis said:
In some brasilian foruns I participate, people are gerring crazy with these news.
They start a conspiracy that EA is sabotating the nintendo switch.
The arguments:
-EA is decreasing the supply of nintedo switch versions(they see less copies on shelves than ps360 versions).
-EA would say that the version dont sell on switch and would not bring fifa 2019 and other to switch.
-They only made fifa 2018 to comprove that : we tryed, but it dont sell.

Man, too crazy. Im trying to explain that the ps360 is still relevant for fifa, that EA never cared about nintendo consumers opinion on them, and that a company goal is profit, why would they spend money on something they are sabotaging?

They're not decreasing supply, I mean, there have been issues here and there in the UK, but it's not as if we were talking about 10K people who couldn't get their copy, the quantity is actually way smaller, probably between 2 and 4K people who couldn't find their physical copy. The problem lies on the fact that EA set expectations too low, they probably didn't even care about it and totally knew the Switch version would flop, and this can also be noticed when we consider they didn't release a single trailer for the Switch version and the lack of in-game screenshots in NA eShop section. Promotion was also very scarce, we saw very restrictive off-screen footage, and even Nintendo was the first one to release docked gameplays at Gamescom.  

Even divisive statements from one of the guys in charge of EA Bucharest was one of the things that most stood out within Nintendo fans in regards to FIFA 18, when he described the game as being "more social so newcomers don't get overwhelmed", so he didn't need to admit the Switch version is, in reality, a second-class citizen release. 

I think EA simply is too skeptical in regards of the Switch and simply doesn't care about it. FIFA 18 for instance feels almost as a compromise, as if Nintendo was the first one to approach EA for one of their titles. What currently separates EA from folks like Bethesda and 2K, for example, it's maybe that these two genuinely got interested in the system, or perhaps Nintendo continuously requested them to produce for the Switch.

it's really crazy to think a company would put money to screw themselves instead of just not releasing it. It probably is cheaper to produce only 10k copies for UK launch and do a second print of how much they gauge interest for than doing 50k copies and end up having 40k on shelves after launch without perspective of sales.