Electronic Arts may not necessarily be the top dog in third-party video game publishing any more, but they’re still no slouch when it comes to moving units.
In earnings summaries for their previous fiscal year, which ended on March 31, EA reported that five releases broke the 5 million mark in terms of sales. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was among them and EA CEO John Riccitello said that the FPS outperformed their expectations and contributed a significant boost to their bottom line. The Sims 3, Madden NFL 10 and Need for Speed: Shift all surpassed the five million mark, too. We in the Americas tend to shrug at soccer games but the rest of the world pushed FIFA 10 to a massive 10-million unit sell-through. Also notable was the 1.5 million downloads for Battlefield 1943, which made the online exclusive the best-selling game on both the Playstation Network and Xbox Live.
Looking ahead through next March, the company’s planning 18 handheld titles, 28 console games and 17 PC releases. Among the biggies are the already announced Bulletstorm, Real Time World’s ambitious FPS MMO All Points Bulletin and Dead Space 2. There may be a few surprise announcements at E3, too, so this may be the beginning of an upswing for EA.