Star Wars: Battlefront II is finally coming in mid-November, with much promise to be superior in every way to its predecessor. But the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi is hitting theaters soon after on December 15, and with timing like that comes great opportunity to sell games. And we all know how much EA likes to do that.
EA CFO Blake Jorgensen pointed out during EA's earnings briefing this week that the company did this for the 2015 Battlefront, piggybacking on Star Wars: The Force Awakens to much success. It ended up shipping more than 15 million copies to date, becoming one of the most commercially successful Star Wars games ever.
Jorgensen added that a discount may also be seen during Black Friday and Christmas. Typically, discounts on a brand new game point to poor performance in initial sales, but Jorgensen sees this opportunity differently.
"That's the way the games business always has worked. And so if you see the title on discount, don't read anything into that other than the fact that, that's the way you sell games in the holidays," He said (via MP1st).
EA also discounts Madden every year around the Super Bowl to capitalize on increased interest. To be fair, this is leaps and bounds better than a predatory company raising prices during times of increased interest/demand.
Star Wars: Battlefront II will feature loot boxes, but changed their approach to them due to fan feedback. With EA's closure of Visceral Games, who was working on a single-player Star Wars game, it was made clear that single-player games tend to make less profit. This was also confirmed by Xbox Head of Publishing Shannon Loftis. Loot boxes and other microtransactions are often tried by publishers as a way to make up for lost profit, much to the dismay of gamers. This approach negatively impacted Middle-earth: Shadow of War with their microtransactions before the game even released. As it turns out, the in-game store seems relatively unnecessary and to some seems to be an imperfection on an otherwise extremely enjoyable game.
Is this discount approach with Star Wars: Battlefront II taken with microtransactions expected to make the money back? Or is it simply a way to get the game into as many hands as possible?
