Much has been written about Anthem’s rocky path through development, shaky launch, and the recent reshuffling of post-launch plans as developer BioWare continues to try and save its struggling online game.
Now, publisher EA has weighed in with its take on the financial side of things. It’s not great but, actually, it’s not bad either.
Let’s get that bad stuff out the way first. “Anthem underperformed our expectations,” EA exec Blake Jorgensen said during the company’s investor call late last night (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). This seems to be the overall vibe. “The launch of Anthem did not meet our expectations,” EA boss Andrew Wilson also confirmed at one point.
EA had, perhaps wisely, never bet big on Anthem delivering immediate profits. Its expectations were conservative, and yet Anthem did not meet these. That’s not great.
But EA also make it clear to investors it would still be spending money to support Anthem for the forseeable future. Also, that it still had confidence in BioWare, a developer which has now suffered two flops on the trot.
“We continue to invest heavily in Anthem, with developers working on game quality, content, systems and game mechanics. It’s great original IP and we’ve doubled down on the product,” Jorgensen said.
“We are committed to the live service for Anthem, and delivering for our community in this new IP over the long-term,” Wilson later added. “We believe in the team at BioWare, and we also believe in what they set out to achieve with this game – building a new IP and melding genres to reach a new audience.”
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Anthem did not perform well in the UK chart, which counts physical copies sold. In fact, Anthem shifted half the boxed copies of Mass Effect Andromeda. But it did much better in digital sales – perhaps because of its online nature.