Visitors play the ‘EA Sports FC 25’ game in front of a placard with England’s midfielder Jude Bellingham at the Electronic Arts booth during the media day at the Gamescom video games trade fair in Cologne, western Germany on Aug. 21, 2024.
Ina Fassbender | AFP | Getty Images
Electronic Arts slashed its full-year bookings guidance on Wednesday, blaming the shortfall on underperforming games, notably its soccer franchise, EA Sports FC. The shares dropped 7% in extended trading.
For the fiscal third quarter, which ended Dec. 31, EA said it expects to report about $2.215 billion in net bookings, versus previous guidance of $2.4 billion to $2.55 billion.
Revenue in the December quarter will be about $1.88 billion, with $1.11 in diluted earnings per share, the company said in a statement.
EA said it expects net bookings for the full fiscal year, ending March 31, of between $7 billion and $7.15 billion, below previous guidance of $7.5 billion to $7.8 billion. EA says net bookings include physical game sales as well as revenue from online games.
The warning reveals weakness in the most prominent soccer video game franchise since 1993. It used to fall under the FIFA branding, but in 2022 EA’s deal with FIFA ended and the last two EA soccer games have been sold as EA Sports FC.
The company also said that “Dragon Age,” a role-playing game for game consoles such as Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox, had 1.5 million players during the quarter, which underperformed the company’s expectations by nearly 50%.
“During Q3, we continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in the statement. “However, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations.”
EA said that while its soccer franchise, which it calls Global Football, had seen two years of double-digit growth in net booking, it started to see a slowdown during the December quarter. The company said that it expects Global Football sales to be down on a year-over-year basis, and said that bookings from online sales, or live services, would also decline in fiscal 2025. The company’s soccer franchise, accounted for the majority of the live services shortfall.
EA said that recently updated FC 25 with new content, improved gameplay, and an annual “Team of the Year” update, which it says was well-received by players.
The warning comes weeks ahead of EA’s planned third-quarter earnings on Feb. 4.
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