• Anthem expected to sell 5-6 million copies, Bioware on suicide watch.
    63 replies, posted
https://www.dualshockers.com/anthem-ea-sales-expectations-fiscal-year/ Funny title aside, i severely doubt anthem will even reach 3 million. Mass effect 3 reached 3.5 ffs as a final installment to a trilogy.
Bioware is one of EA's last non-sports based studios. If Bioware dies, and then dice, EA is very much fucked
with the current state of the game and how uninspired it is I'll be surprised if it reaches 1 million
Based on their market share lately they're already headed in a downward spiral. Bioware and Dice actually dying and customers losing that last little bits of goodwill they had for the studios EA buys (purely to exploit IPs and goodwill) they may enter a death spiral. Finally.
But we lose Bioware and Dice, and the franchises they've created. No more Mass Effect, no more Battlefield... That's what's really sad.
RIP SWTOR Now EA will fire the last janitor who has been keeping it alive.
The bioware you're pining for doesn't really exist in the same state anymore, and most of the people associated with ME are working on DA of those who remain.
Not necessarily. They can break away from the sinking ship once things get bad. The worst possible result, though, would be all these companies and their IPs simply being snatched up by the other giants: Activision, Ubisoft, or some other shit company that consolidates things and is only slightly less wicked than EA.
In fairness, some of the products of those shuttered companies are still flourishing without them(regardless of a arguable decline in quality). Need For Speed is still going strong without Blackbox, and The Sims 4 is doing very well despite losing Maxis. I'm still pissed about those companies dying for no reason asides from EA's greed, but it's not like EA is IP-less in the case of Bioware dying. They have clearly been consolidating control over their publishers(by intentionally hindering or killing them) so that they have stronger control over the final products. It's fucked up, but it does make sense given that both of their closest competitors, Activision, and especially Ubisoft, both work almost entirely internally rather than through various other, somewhat autonomous, publishers.
As someone who enjoyed the demo, this estimate seems high. As solid as the gameplay was, it was a technical mess and it takes a lot of faith to believe it'll all be better in the launch build like they claim it is. It's probably going to have a slow launch even if it ends up being fantastic purely because of people's justified skepticism in EA and this whole "games as a service" thing.
rip in piss
Welcome to implausible demands from the investors that will lead to yet another "sold under expectations" article later this year.
How long until Respawn gets the same treatment? Apex isn't gonna make Fortnite levels of cash, and EA isn't satisfied unless they have all of the money.
Sad to be reminded of Bullfrog Studios and why they're gone.
I'm furious to the point of incoherence that TF3 got canned/shelved in favor of another bland fucking BR that didn't even bother to include the movement system that people loved from TF2. I can see not having Titans in a sleep aid royale but come the fuck on.
I genuinely do not believe better companies will pick up what's left of EA. The other shitty publishing giants are going to get first dibs on their popular IP's and then most likely proceed to do precisely the same thing as EA did with them. It's that or they obtain the rights to the games that were their competition, do nothing with them in order to try and lure their fanbases to their games, and then if that doesn't work they'll do a revival and act like they actually saved that game all along. I'm sure there might be some good revivals, but overall I think what EA killed will very likely just stay dead unless some of the rights get picked up by people who actually care about making games instead of appeasing shareholders.
When the belly of the beast has no more charnel to churn, it shall cannibalize itself and collapse inward.
5-6 mil BEFORE the demo came out maybe. Now? Severely doubt it'll get near that.
I really don't know if the numbers EA demands on sales are anywhere sane, but it seems like EA is just running everything to the ground, either by overworking and shortening deadlines ending in badly put together products, changing directions that end up in games losing their personalities, or demanding high sales numbers that aren't reached and are seen as failures that jump to studios getting axed.
Its Destiny but the shooting feels bad, and considering that's the only thing Destiny has going for it, not a good start.
No new AAA IP is going to sell 5 million in the first year. Even old and beloved IP struggle to even sell 3 million. It's just a death watch now.
This is the culmination of what happens when you become so desperate to please your investors that the cog wheels grow bent, out of shape and stop working soon enough. If it doesn't make record-breaking profits (no one will anymore in that regard), you're probably toast. Even Zenimax, in charge of Bethesda and Id, aren't this bad.
I'm convinced this is actually the entire plan. The investors are milking EA dry until they kill the entire thing, and then they'll move on, take over another company, and start the process anew. It may not even be a gaming company - investors only give a shit about what is profitable at any given moment. Vulture capitalists will be the end of the american economy if something does not change. Intentionally bankrupting companies by focusing on maximizing short term gains is NOT sustainable in the long run. The collapse of physical retail, for instance, owes as much to venture capitalists as it does to online competition. The way our economic system was designed did not take into account that modern investors have discovered how to game the system at the expense of everyone else. They have figured out that the optimal strategy to maximize profits is to destroy companies rather than to grow them. If they keep doing this, entire industries will eventually collapse.
Tbh its more like Diablo with guns.
Sports games are the only thing keeping EA afloat. And the only reason that's the case is because they have a monopoly on official leagues. We don't know how good a sports game can be, we just don't
Seriously doubt that they'll make that target, which is a shame as this could potentially kill BioWare. Even worse since Mass Effect Andromeda died for Anthem. And if BioWare dies, then all of their franchises will die with them.
For reference Kingdom Hearts 3 has sold around 5 mil copies so far. Not exactly a fair comparison but expecting these kinds of numbers from a new IP is fucking wild.
I want to add to this list they attempted to buy Take-Two, failed then tried to buy out the shareholders. https://www.cnet.com/news/ea-drops-2-billion-bid-to-acquire-take-two/ Most imagine EA choke holding RDR and GTA, but I see a world where only Sega's Football Manager being the only non-EA sports title.
You should look into War for the Overworld and Two Point Hospital. I've tried the first and it's dangerously close to Dungeon Keeper as you can get without actually calling it 'Dungeon Keeper'. The second one is made by some of the original creators and I'm looking to buy it soon! On topic, there's an immense feeling of Schadenfreude coming from the disgusting bloated monster that EA is being in some trouble after they've absolutely killed off so many of my fondly remembered game series. Just thinking about that fucking mobile dungeon keeper game to be what they decided to do with the IP after holding onto it for so long, as well as the disgusting mess they've done to command & conquer (and all of it's spin-offs) just really make me wonder what we could've gotten if they hadn't broken so many cool studios. There might've been a lot more blunders lately from companies like Konami, but EA will never cease being the personification of the "AAA-GAMING" market stagnation, lootboxes/DLC, and all around corporate greed for me.
This better not effect future Dragon Age games. I really liked what Bioware was doing with that series (EA's terrible business practices leaking into it aside) and I'm going to be super pissed off if I miss out on another game at least as good as DAI because EA wanted their fucking destiny clone.
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