In a grand twist that surprises no one, EA has revealed that they’re making a lot of money from their titles as well as from Ultimate Team.
Chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen attended a Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference and revealed a couple figures of interest, including that sixty million PS4 and Xbox One consoles have been purchased at this point in time, 5 million more consoles than Jorgensen predicted would be sold by the end of 2015. About 36 million of those consoles are Playstation 4’s.
Jorgensen also said that extra content, which includes map packs, season passes and in-game purchases, earns $1.3 billion a year. Jorgen even spoke specifically about sports games throughout the conference, saying, “Half of that is roughly our Ultimate Team,” meaning $650 million. For those unfamiliar, Ultimate Team is EA’s fantasy mechanic that is part of their Madden, FIFA and NHL titles. It allows for gamers to purchase and trade or sell players in-game.
Expanding on Ultimate Team, Jorgensen said:
“I think for us, the mechanic of Ultimate team is a classic human nature mechanic. people like to collect things, they like to trade things, they like to compete, and they like to build great teams to compete and they’ll typically pay money to beat their friends. And so, if we can continue to leverage that mechanic across many products, it’s a way of deepening the engagement with the game and creating an opportunity for someone to have a very strong entertainment vehicle over a period of time.”
Jorgensen detailed different inner workings at EA such as the possibilities with their Disney and Star Wars franchises and their capability with sims and licensing. He also revealed that FIFA is the world’s largest sports game, that $300-$400 million accounts for subscription services and that their mobile business brings in over $650 million each year.