Earlier this week, GameStop had an investor call, and one of the properties it said was “underperforming” was the heavily anticipated licensed multiplayer shooter Star Wars: Battlefront. The retailer said that as the weeks wore on, it lowered its sales projections week by week, and the actual sales were even lower than that.
“We’re not going to quantify it in terms of actual numbers,” GameStop chief operating officer Tony Bartel told investors. “But we had high expectations that diminished somewhat as it got closer and it failed to hit those lowered expectations.” Now, EA chief operating officer Peter Moore has come out to dispute that.
“There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title and I want everybody to 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.” said Moore as he disputed GameStop’s comments.
In other words, Moore is saying the real sales will come after The Force Awakens launches on 15 December 2015.
Back at the end of October, Electronic Arts stated in an investor call that they expected 13 million copies sold across three platforms based on the record open beta numbers. However, those were gamers playing a free trial, and not having had spent $60 on a full game.
Gamers have reported that they’ve seen empty servers playing late at night, which is a bad sign for any recently released online game. If EA reduces the number of servers for Star Wars: Battlefront, then that will be solid evidence the game hasn’t sold as expected.
