Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson has dealt a crushing blow to fans’ hopes for a return to quality outings in the once-beloved FPS franchise. Wilson revealed that the next Battlefield game will prioritize being “another tremendous live service [title],” dashing the expectations of many eager fans.
At the tail end of EA’s Q4 2024 earnings call on May 7th, CEO Andrew Wilson, along with VP Andrew Uerkwitz and CFO Stuart Canfield, addressed investor questions about the future of the Battlefield franchise. Wilson confirmed that the next Battlefield game will be “another tremendous live service [title],” disappointing many fans who had hoped for a return to quality outings.
During the Q&A session, ROTH MKM Senior Research Analyst Eric Handler asked the trio to “break down in terms of percentages” the genre make-up of their live service offerings. However, instead of fulfilling the request, the EA leadership team opted to discuss the broader overview of their overall live service plans.
“We’re not going to break down directly the splits across the live service businesses,” explained Canfield, responding on behalf of his colleagues. “As a reminder, the live service category encompasses not only sort of sports, also incorporates mobile, incorporates other parts of our business, whether it’s our subscription business from EA Play and other parts that comprise live services. It’s a heavily aggregated category across multiple levers we have by virtue of the portfolio and the strategy we carry today.”
“Obviously, we think that through our massive online communities, they are our largest components as we come through that live service piece,” he continued. “When you think about [EA Sports FC], Sims and Apex as comprising the biggest three of those mass online communities, we look to add obviously college football this year and obviously, Madden accompanies that inside of that envelope.”
And it was in attempting to offer support to his CFO’s above declarations that Wilson would break the bad news to Battlefield players.
Jumping off of Canfield’s remarks, Wilson then interjected, “I might just add, one of the great differentiators of our company is actually the breadth of our live services.”
“So if you look at FY 2024 as we come into FY 2025, at the very center of our FY 2024 was this incredible rebranding of [FIFA to EA Sports FC] and the launching and growth of that [brand] even as we lapped a World Cup year,” said the CEO. “Madden, again, a live service that grew and reached record levels of revenue. We had our biggest EA SPORTS year, I would argue that EA SPORTS may be one of the greatest global multi-sport media brands in the world and certainly has greater fandom than most other brands that it competes with. We had double-digit growth in the community on The Sims, which again targets a very, very different demographic of players.”
“And when we look at the many hundreds of millions of shared user-generated content items, you are seeing the evolution of that live service into a broader community creation platform,” Wilson added. “We continue to build resilience into Apex. And as a community sentiment of that grew 29 points over the last fiscal year. And as we’re primed to continue to grow and expand that live service, we have great opportunity.”
To this end, the CEO sadly divulged, “I’ve just spent a whole bunch of time with the collective Battlefield team, playing what they’re building and it is going to be another tremendous live service.”
“And if you really use [EA Sports FC] as the blueprint and you think about across platforms, across modalities, across business models, across geographies and also branching fan beyond the bounds of the traditional game to create truly a football fan platform that really extends the magnitude of the live service,” ultimately concluded Wilson. “This really is at the very center of our strategy when we talk about building content and experiences that entertain and engage massive online communities. And so, as we think about this going forward, we believe this differentiates us from the marketplace in video games and certainly in the marketplace in entertainment and really positions us for real growth against what these emerging generations are looking for in the context of their entertainment consumption.”
It’s worth noting the irony of EA’s decision to double down on their live service plans despite the model facing rejection from players. This observation isn’t merely anecdotal—EA themselves acknowledged it earlier in the earnings call.
As explained by Wilson, “Live services net bookings was $5.43 billion, down 2% year-over-year or down 1% in constant currency. Excluding the impact of the sunset of Apex Mobile, live service net bookings was about flat year-over-year. Strength in live services was driven by high teens growth year-over-year in our global football franchise, fueled by FC Ultimate Team and FC Mobile was offset by declines in Apex Legends.”
The CEO further emphasized that the struggles in live services are anticipated to persist in the foreseeable future. “Our Q1 FY 2025 outlook reflects many of the trends we saw in Q4 2024 related to slate timing and atypical seasonality as we lap difficult comps year-over-year,” he explained to investors. “Live services, including EA SPORTS FC and Apex Legends, will continue to face difficult comparable periods.”
Looking ahead to the overall FY 2025, Wilson asserted, “We expect fiscal year net bookings of $7.3 billion to $7.7 billion, down 2% to up 4% year-over-year with mid-single-digit growth in our core live services business, partially offset by fewer title launches, lighter catalog contributions, and headwinds from our mobile business related to portfolio optimization decisions taken over the last six months. Excluding our sunset titles, we expect mobile to be up low single digit.”
In summary: “That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.”
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