EA released its financial statements from the third quarter of 2013 today, and most of it was concerned with these “consoles” I've been hearing about. Apparently there were a couple of big ones? Weird how I didn't hear anything. Buried down in the release, though, was the bottom line: EA continues to make a ton of money from a lot of different places, including $186 million from PC gamers.
The big question is whether the continuing issues with Battlefield 4 hurt the game's sales at all. The short answer is: no. Battlefield sold a ton of copies. There was just a hint of trouble, though, when it was revealed that sales of Battlefield (along with other games) slowed more quickly than analysts had estimated:
“[Battlefield 4] has got a long tail, as you well know, and we will continue to be able to sell this effectively throughout the next fiscal year,” EA president and chief operating officer Peter Robert Moore said. “So yes, we did see some impact of the current-gen softness that was indicated by Andrew and Blake in their prepared statements, but this is not, we believe, linked to any quality issues.”
Even if Battlefield sales do start to dry up in a bad way, EA will almost certainly be just fine for the foreseeable future. The company is sitting on a cash reserve of $664 million, its biggest piggy bank since 2005. And, as frustrating as the Battlefield glitches are, EA is making most of its money from sports game sales to consoles and freemium tablet titles like The Simpsons: Tapped Out.
If you've got a serious lack of big numbers and economic details in your life, you can read the full financial release at EA's investor site .
