Lots of fans have speculated that releasing the two prime titles, Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 within the same fortnight may not have been a smart business move on Electronic Arts(EA’s) end. Being someone who can’t really crunch figures or even touch bases for a decent living, I obviously cannot confirm one way or another, but it was evident that it was a deliberate move.
Now to know if it will significantly affect the overall playerbase for the less popular title of the two, Titanfall 2, is the more important discussion.
In the middle of an earnings call today, a prominent EA stakeholder wanted an answer to whether the publisher would implement such a scheduling tactic again in the future. After all, it is a genuine concern for a stakeholder as bricks and mortar sales for Titanfall 2 have been less than flattering in the UK, and EA’s entire share price took a dive after analysts predicted that the game would fail.
EA’s commander and chief, Andrew Wilson, didn’t explicitly answer the stakeholder’s question, though he did justify the publisher’s motives. He answered,
We think there’s really three types of players, People that really love Battlefield and that kind of big strategic gameplay that will orient in that direction; the player that loves the fast, fluid, kinetic gameplay of Titanfall 2 that really orient in that direction; and the player that just has to play the two greatest shooters this year and will buy both.
And again, we’re very very excited about the quality in both titles. We believe they both will have a long sale cycle, both this quarter through the festive season and deep into the years to come. And so as we think about the long game on this, we couldn’t be in a better position for what we think is delivering great games to a very, very big player base.
Though it should be noted that this launch schedule was set in stone a long time ago, as was stated by a Respawn representative and whatever the sales for both games may be, one thing’s for sure, EA has published two magnificent games which you shouldn’t waste any time in purchasing and playing.
