FIFA’s Ultimate Team business is a huge money spinner for EA and has generated over $800 million in net revenue annually, a increase of 20% compared to last year, so it’s no surprise that they are looking at bringing the same feature to other games.
“Like Battlefield or Battlefront, our Star Wars game, which are very similar in the depth of play – we can possibly add a similar mechanic to that. We spend a lot of time thinking about it,” said EA CFO Blake Jorgensen. “Not for tomorrow, but over the next couple of years you’re going to see a lot more of that in our portfolio.”
Jogensen went on to say that he expects gamers to continue to shift towards digital downloads rather than boxed products, with around half us selecting digital versions within the next five years. That’s good news for EA as they don’t have to pay for boxes, discs to be pressed, or give retailers a cut of their profits.
“The good thing for us us that every single percentage point move towards full-game downloads adds to our margin,” he said. “It’s a great tailwind for our business, combined with the fact that more and more of the extra content that’s added to games is also all digital.”
Source: GI.Biz
Tony Cawley
That’s a good thing because it’s a good mechanic but I think they need to improve their percentages of actually getting something decent. The amount of ultimate team packs I’ve opened with my boy and we always get rubbish.
They should add some factors like after you’ve opened x packs you’re guaranteed at least one of so many of something good.
Erroneus
Agree. I almost stopped buying packs for my hard earned gold and instead use my gold to buy the players I want from the transfer market.