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EA, PC and DLC

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By McKaby02-11-2015

EA's Quarter 2 Financial Year 2016 details are out, and it's very telling, and don't worry, it's been broken down easily. The big ones, Year On Year revenue sources (projected and actual) we can see that PC & Other (interestingly covering “handheld” as well, so more PSVita titles coming out?) is slowly going down. While still being strong – something I will come to later, with console and mobile phone (including in-app purchases) growing.

When we look at Type of income YOY we see that “Full Games” is slowing growing, with “Extra Content” taking massive leaps every year, Subs/Adverts/Other has had a drop and is slowly recovering – though I am not certain if that is to do with reduction in Subs from SWTOR and also more usage of add-blockers on their website.  Mobile however is holding a steady growth, and that does include in-app purchases.

Now, the take-away from this is that EA is getting more money from selling DLC's than it is actual full games, mobile games with in-app purchases is starting to get close to the PC & Other levels of funding, while PC is slipping slowly, it's still very strong. A caveat to that is also that on a following slide they state that the new “Need for Speed” game will be out on PC 6 months after the console release. Another way that narrows the market for PC games, as owners of console and PC will more likely buy it on console if it comes out first there.

In my opinion, what we are seeing is that less and less people are buying EA games on PC's, partly to do with Origin being the only way to play, and there is still a strong current against Origin, along with it not having a back catalogue of every EA game yet. But in the last year it has really fleshed out I will admit, and also that it seems EA is selling more and more DLC so people are waiting until GOTY editions to purchase the games. And also sales which are rare on Origin but do happen.

My take on this is that yes, EA is seeing a loss with PC partly because of the amount of DLC's and also delaying PC ports by 6 months or more. PC gamers seem to focus more where there are sales and also more often to buy GOTY versions than game and each DLC separately.

You are free to make your own opinions though.


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Posts: 120

GOTY editions just make so much sense, especially for PC gamers, who have Steam-sale-fueled backlogs and can wait. What really gets me, though is the GOTY/Director's cuts that add content not available in the base game + DLC. If the industry keeps releasing those, these trends are going to continue.