Anthem fell short of EA's sales expectations

Electronic Arts had been banking on BioWare's Anthem and Respawn’s Apex Legends to lead its Q4 but, while Apex Legends performed well, Anthem didn't meet EA’s sales expectations.

In a conference call covering its latest earnings report, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen noted that the game hasn't lived up to its sales goals, but didn’t share any specifics on how many copies Anthem sold beyond that comment.

However, a previous goal shared by EA last quarter (and picked up by GameSpot) had the company estimating that Anthem would move between 5 and 6 million copies before March 31, 2019.

While Anthem didn’t set any sales records for EA, Jorgensen did say that the game saw the largest percentage of digital purchases for any of the company’s games to date and that it (along with the free-to-play Apex Legends) helped the company’s full-year digital net bookings increase by 14 percent year-over-year to $1.19 billion.

Despite that underperformance, EA leadership said that the company continues "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."