What happened to Sports games?

[Bofferbrauer2]

Barkley said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Pretty much half the income for EA is from Fifa, and most of that is FUT. I would need to dig in my old posts to get the exact quote, but they said in an investor's meeting that Fifa makes more than half of the digital income of EA.

In other words, EA is earning way more through FUT than they do through game sales.

Found most recent article that gives a number I can find, nov 2018: "Revenue from Ultimate Team is quite large, making up 50% of live services or $1.1 billion over the last year. That's 21% of EA's total revenue."

It'd put FUT and game sales at about 50/50. Probably slightly in favour of FUT.

Your report is older than that. I could find the same result, but in July 2018 already. Just FYI. Also, since it talks about "last year", that would mean FY 2018, so mostly 2017.

FUT had been growing for years. 2016, it only generated 650M, for instance.

Also, don't expect EA sold all those games at full price.

Truth be told, however, it's also a bit hard to gauge what exactly is in each category in their earnings calls. For instance, in the one from Q4 2018, digital net bookings are supposed to be 68% of a total income of 5.2 Billion dollar, so 3.54 Billions. Divide that by 60 ($60 games), and you still would get 59M games sold. Somehow, I doubt they managed to sell that much, especially in 2017 (FY 2018 means for them it ended in March 2018). Live services btw were at 2.2 Billion. And from an interview I had posted in an old thread where I had a similar discussion with somebody over Fifa, they said that, while they won't provide numbers, that Fifa always makes more than half of those numbers. I'm pretty sure the 1.1 Billion got extrapolated that way. But 1.1 billion are just the floor, not the exact number.

Interesting also that number 2 in their Live services are not Madden or any other sports title, but The Sims 4.

Also, reading the transcripts and seeing there Andrew Wilson claiming they're always thinking about the players first makes me wanna puke.