'Q3 was not the financial performance we wanted or expected'
EA has reported a downturn in net bookings and live service revenue after key titles like EA Sports FC 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell short of internal expectations.
The company had already warned that would be the case, and in its latest fiscal report for the third quarter ended December 31, 2024, confirmed that net bookings dropped by 6 percent year-over-year to $2.2 billion.
Within total net bookings, full game net bookings dipped by 3 percent year-on-year to $633 million. Live services and other net bookings fell by 8 percent to $1.58 billion over the same period.
EA CFO Stuart Canfield said that decline was the result of soft performances from some titles.
"Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed [within] the competitive dynamics of the single-player RPG market and EA Sports FC 25 started strong, but softened through the holiday period," said Canfield.
Sticking with Veilguard, Canfield added that blockbuster storytelling has traditionally been a solid bet but feels the landscape is now shifting. "[Dragon Age's] financial performance highlights the evolving industry landscape and reinforces the importance of our actions to reallocate resources towards our most significant and highest potential opportunities," he added.
It can often be difficult to extract meaning from corpospeak, but it's a snippet that indicates EA is becoming increasingly downbeat about the prospects of single-player experiences. Perhaps that's no surprise given live services represented 74 percent of EA's business on a trailing 12 month basis.
In any case, EA has now tempered its expectations for Veilguard–which has attracted 1.5 million players to date–and updated its full-year guidance to include "lower contributions" from the title.
Discussing its other franchises, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said EA Sports FC underperformed because some players are waiting longer to upgrade between annual releases.
"While early acquisition started out strong, post-launch acquisition cohorts waited longer in the cycle to acquire a new title as many stayed in prior iteration," explained Wilson. "Combined plays in our full HD experiences were flat year-over-year. This mix shift and slower new player acquisition accounted for about half of the title's underperformance versus expectations."
He indicated that recent attempts to fix gameplay issues generated a "strong response," driving player retention rates and delivering a record number of weekly active users in January. Wilson described the impact of EA Sports FC's performance as a "temporary" blip rather than a structural issue that will impact the company in the long-term.
"Our global football franchise net bookings have grown over 70 percent over the last five fiscal years, making it one of the biggest sports entertainment properties in the world," he added, noting that FY25 remains on track to be the second most successful year in the history of the franchise.
The company's other major sports franchise, American Football, remains on pace to surpass $1 billion in net bookings during the current fiscal year and delivered double-digit weekly active user growth in Q3.
Elsewhere, Apex Legends net bookings declined year-over-year but Wilson explained that performance was in with expectations. He said the live service shooter "has not been headed in the direction that we have wanted for some time" and suggested a robust overhaul could be on the way.
"We do believe there will be a time where we need to do a more meaningful update of Apex as a broad game experience," he continued. "You should imagine we probably wouldn't drop that on top of a Battlefield launch. And so from a timing standpoint, our thinking right now is that that would exist post Battlefield."
The Sims franchise, meanwhile, delivered year-over-year growth and according to Wilson surpassed expectations after expanding with spin-off MySims: Cozy Bundle. He noted that 50 percent of all players who purchased that title were new to EA.
Looking ahead, EA expects to deliver net bookings of $7 billion to $7.15 billion by the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2025–down 6 percent to 4 percent year-on-year.
EA has also announced plans for a $1 billion accelerated stock repurchase in addition to its current $375 million per quarter program. Canfield said that decision "reinforces our strategy and commitment to returning capital to stockholders" and "demonstrates our confidence in our long-term growth outlook."
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