EA Q3: SWTOR moves 2 million units, 1.7M active users
EA has posted $1.65 billion in revenue for Q3 FY12, which is a 15% increase year-over-year from $1.41 billion. Packaged goods sales came in at $1.23 billion compared to $1.108 billion year-over-year, and losses for the quarter were $205 million, compared to $322 million year-over-year.
The force is strong with this one
EA announced it sold 2 million units of Bioware's MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, which currently has 1.7 million daily active subscribers, making it the "fastest growing subscription MMO in history," according to the firm.
EA CEO John Riccitiello noted during the call to investors that 40% of sales for the MMO were through the firm's Origin service.
EA said the discrepancy between the 2 million units sold of SWTOR and the 1.7 active subscribers was due to factors such as purchasers who haven't played the game yet; players who have opted out; those who are playing the MMO on purchased game cards; or are still on the 30-day trial.
Revenue for SWTOR will be announced once the firm has full-year subscription numbers available.
The game has 1 million unique log-ins per day, and each player spends around 4 hours per day playing. Frequent content releases are planned, and as previously announced, another large update is coming in March.
Plans to reach a broader market are in place - particularly regarding the Asian, New Zealand and Australian markets - and will be announced soon.
"We recently announced that on March 1, that we'd be in Australia and New Zealand. It's all about, as you might imagine, server location down there, but we have a very strong demand from all of our consumers in that particular part of the market," said investor relations VP Peter Ausnit.
"We're looking at other opportunities to go into Asia as well. But you will see more and more announcements as we roll this title out globally. We want to make sure the level of service is there, and that does require the investment in hardware. But demand is certainly there, and you're going to hear a lot more about that in the coming weeks."
BF3 gains 24% of FPS market; social and Origin go big
EA noted in its financial release that Origin has 9.3 million registered users and has generated more than $100 million in revenue since launch. In comparison, Steam has 40 million registered users.
The firm has plans to bring the service to more people on more platforms, but is not ready to announce any concrete plans at this time.
"We are pleased to report a strong holiday quarter driven by Battlefield 3, FIFA 12 and a strong showing by our digital games and services," said EA CEO John Riccitiello.
"This is the highest operation cash flow in 31 quarters, and the kind of quarter a CEO loves to report," he said during the call to investors.
"This is the highest operation cash flow in 31 quarters, and the kind of quarter a CEO loves to report."
It was noted Battlefield 3 has sold through 11 million units, and holds a 24% share in the western FPS market.
FIFA 12 sold through more than 10 million units and in fiscal 12, the firm expects the franchise to reach $100 million in revenue.
Madden NFL 12 has sold through almost 5 million units life-to-date.
As a publisher, the firm's share grew by 3% to 20% in Europe and by 1% to 17% in North America.
PopCap revenue was up 30%, and EA's social gaming sector now boasts 54 million monthly active users, compared to 39 million the year-over-year.
Digital revenue was up 78% to $377 million for Q3, and the firm noted it has nearly reached its goal of garnering $1 billion in digital revenue on a "trailing 12 months" basis.
Origin and FIFA 12 were high contributors to the sector, with the former contributing $100 million in revenue.Meanwhile, full game downloads provided $130 million in revenue.
The firm said $49 million in digital revenue came from "packaged goods distribution" - which includes the DLC sector - with FIFA 12 and FIFA Ultimate Team the main earners with microtransactions.
"Innovation that makes this franchise so unique is FIFA Ultimate Team, a digital game extension that creates a massive online community where football fans can build, manage and compete with their Ultimate Team," said Brown. "In just 3 months, FIFA Ultimate Team generated $39 million in microtransactions. That's 69% more than we generated in the same period last year.
"If we compare the total digital revenue from FIFA 11 Ultimate Team to what we expect for FIFA 12 Ultimate Team in this fiscal year, we're looking to see about a 25% increase franchise-to-franchise, and so the overall packaged goods units sold is not increasing by 25% year-over-year.
"So we are expanding by a decent margin, the microtransaction revenue per user of FIFA."
EA was the number one publisher in the mobile sector for the quarter and while the firm is "bullish" on tablets, the install base is more prevalent in the handheld space for its mobile offerings.