EA Forecasts 6M Sales for Anthem in Six Weeks

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According to EA’s crystal ball, Anthem will be a pretty big success: CFO Blake Jorgensen has told investors the publisher expects to sell as many as six million copies of the BioWare title before the end of the fiscal year. Anthem’s two demo weekends, which, according to Jorgensen, helped people realize “it is a game that's unlike any other game they've ever played,” saw more than 40M hours of play, so there does seem to be healthy interest in the title.

The fiscal year ends on March 31, 2019, and EA CFO Blake Jorgensen told the company's investors that it has modelled between five and six million sales for Anthem by that date. Bioware's highly anticipated online game launches on February 22, leaving six weeks for it to reach that target. According to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, that forecast has not changed since last quarter, even though Anthem's demo encountered some well publicized technical issues.
 
If the game and its servers aren't a complete dumpster fire on launch and the game captures the right audience I could see it happening. I don't have a ton of faith in EA making sure the game launches with stable servers though.
 
woulda thought EA would not be much bothered about this considering how well apex legends is doing
 
I actually thought it was pretty fun - when the servers were working.

The verticality makes it feel a lot different than most of the other stuff out there. It reminds me more than a little of the legitimately fun parts of ME:Andromeda. Jump, scoot flank, use specials for combos. And without character animations / appearances that make baby jesus cry! And no Peebee. Actually, if they make Peebee a boss you take down with acid grenades, I'll buy the deluxe edition right now.
 
Lol and their stock will tak another huge hit after not even getting half of that. EA lost a lot of grace with it's consumer in the past couple years with their bull shit and they still think their games will sale insanely good?
 
helped people realize “it is a game that's unlike any other game they've ever played,”

True -- that it was buggy and unstable as hell and is nowhere near ready.
 
So a game they've marketed the hell out of they expect less from than a game they wanted nothing to do with which ended up saving them? That's EA right there.

$60+ game vs free2play? Yeah, the numbers difference makes sense. Not sure what's "EA" about that.
 
I dont know anybody whos particularly excited for it, irl at least. The whole office full of gamers has been pretty meh. I only know one person who played the demo but it crashed or they couldnt get in, so much so that they only played maybe 5 minutes.
 
First BioWare game I’m never going to buy. Good luck hitting those targets.
 
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I was down to play it until I found it there wasn't PvP. No intention of playing it now.
 
According to EA’s crystal ball, Anthem will be a pretty big success: CFO Blake Jorgensen has told investors the publisher expects to sell as many as six million copies of the BioWare title before the end of the fiscal year. Anthem’s two demo weekends, which, according to Jorgensen, helped people realize “it is a game that's unlike any other game they've ever played,” saw more than 40M hours of play, so there does seem to be healthy interest in the title.

The fiscal year ends on March 31, 2019, and EA CFO Blake Jorgensen told the company's investors that it has modelled between five and six million sales for Anthem by that date. Bioware's highly anticipated online game launches on February 22, leaving six weeks for it to reach that target. According to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, that forecast has not changed since last quarter, even though Anthem's demo encountered some well publicized technical issues.

this is how you kill your company you put your CFO front and center of a games design and development then have him put unrealistic expectations on how it will preform in the open market
 
6 mil seems really low for ea. Didnt they want dead space 3 to be 9mil and then fire everyone?
 
I put in 49 hours over the two Demo weekends and really enjoyed it. So far, better than The Division 2's beta.
 
6 million seems really high for the lack of quality found in the game, whomever said that has not played the game. I was super excited until playing the alpha and beta. Weiiiiiiiird.
 
Not interested in any EA game, swore them off many times and always ended up caving and regretting it.

I know of 5 or 6 friends/coworker who bought the game, if they are still playing after 2 or 3 weeks I may cave yet again but it is unlikely.
 
I could see 6M across both consoles and PC before the end of the year.

But by end of Q1'19... i don't know. There's a lot riding on pre-release sales there, and not a lot of time to right the ship if there are any release date issues.

And judging from the Demos, there are plenty of issues. Personally, I liked the premise, but what I saw of the demo wasn't a $60 purchase for me. It has potential.
 
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I could see 6M across both consoles and PC before the end of the year.

That's the metric they want to hit.

Nah, they want 6M in the first six weeks. BFV sold 7M and they called that "disappointing".
 
I put in 49 hours over the two Demo weekends and really enjoyed it. So far, better than The Division 2's beta.
Interesting... Did you not run into many bugs? I ran into issues that kept me from progressing in the game or being kicked out or loading to the point I just gave up. I do have Origin Premier and anthem does come with it thankfully, I will give it another go around.
 
Marauder Shields won't allow me to buy this. Maybe I will check it out a few years later on Origin Access Basic.
 
Interesting... Did you not run into many bugs? I ran into issues that kept me from progressing in the game or being kicked out or loading to the point I just gave up. I do have Origin Premier and anthem does come with it thankfully, I will give it another go around.

Tons of bugs, especially with the first/VIP weekend. Went much more smoothly the second weekend but still not without issues. But most of these problems had already been cleared up in the launch build and some were fixed since then (the developers have been pretty communicative on that front). I also have premier and hope the week early of play will give me a better look at an updated build, but I'm fairly certain I will be buying the game.
 
Tons of bugs, especially with the first/VIP weekend. Went much more smoothly the second weekend but still not without issues. But most of these problems had already been cleared up in the launch build and some were fixed since then (the developers have been pretty communicative on that front). I also have premier and hope the week early of play will give me a better look at an updated build, but I'm fairly certain I will be buying the game.
Fair enough and good to know, I didn't give it a fair chance during the second beta weekend.
 
I didn’t play the demo’s I didn’t have time but my friends who did said it was awesome and that they are pre ordering it. I don’t pre order so I won’t but I do have time off early March so assuming it doesn’t go to shit in that first week or two I’ll probably grab a copy as well.
 
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It sounds like a lot but, honestly, 6m is not a large number. For reference, Battlefront 2 sold over 9m in its first quarter. A large chunk of that was likely within the first few weeks. I'd be surprised if a lot of people bothered to take the effort to cancel pre-orders, even if they weren't enamored with the demo. Outright saying they expect 6m is setting a pretty low bar for a game they're putting up as a major tent-pole release. As I said before, as long as they don't completely fuck it up (and this being EA that is always a possibility) I could see them hitting that number. Even if its not a great game as long it avoids major controversy (like, say, them trying to sell skins for twenty fucking dollars) its going to sell.
 
If they are going to sell that many copies it is not due to EA but to the excellent work Bioware developers did in the days after the demo making clear that their game features won't have any of the stuff that EA is famous for (after launch).
 
I was down to play it until I found it there wasn't PvP. No intention of playing it now.

I watched a couple of videos when a buddy offered me a beta code, but passed once it appeared to be some sort of generic third-person PVE bullet sponge shooter.
 
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