Last year Apex Legends added 28 million new players: In today’s earnings announcement for the third quarter of its fiscal year 2022, Electronic Arts announced the three months that ended on December 31 was the most profitable period ever recorded in terms of net bookings, profitability, and cash flow generation. And it was all led by FIFA 22 and Apex Legends.
At the end of the quarter, Apex Legends monthly active players were higher than 30% from year to year, with more than 28 million players taking part in the free battle royale shooter during the last year.
EA believes that the game will achieve 1 billion net gaming in the current financial year (April 21-March 22).
EA announced it had reported that Apex Legends players had pinned locations, items, and foes more than 322 billion times. It was a massive year for the game.
The publisher also announced that it currently has greater than 540 million active player accounts within its system. With an average of 180 million active accounts per month during the time frame that reported.
Users typically spend 20 percent more time playing EA games than they did in the prior fiscal year.
According to Forbes reports, net bookings for the latest quarter came in at $2.577 billion, an uptick of 177 million compared to the prior year.
Electronic Arts’ total net revenue was $1.789 billion, an increase of $116 million over Q3 2021. Net bookings for the 12 months were up by 22 percent over the previous year.
In addition, with Apex Legends Mobile’s Soft Launch of Apex Legends Mobile coming out shortly, these numbers will likely increase.
Last year Apex Legends added 28 million new players
Tent pole games such as Apex Legends and FIFA continue to be hugely popular. Some spectacular statements were made during the earnings call regarding one particular oversight.
“The launch of Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. Due to the pandemic, employees working from home were more complex than EA had anticipated.
The game ran into a myriad of unexpected performance issues that had to address, and specific aspects of the game’s designs didn’t go over well with the players’ community.
Despite that, game developer DICE recently made announcements about plans to enhance the game in the next few years, and EA continues to plan to announce significant upgrades.
In the course of the conference, EA revised its net bookings forecast from $7.525 billion (a reduction by $100m) and blamed the decrease entirely due to Battlefield 2042.
It also saw growth in different areas of the business, including due to FIFA and Apex Legends, which were able to compensate for the shooter’s poor financial performance.
The bad news isn’t over there. As of the time of posting, Electronic Arts Inc. stock is down over 5% in after-hours trading. And it has stated that it is expecting the 2022 year to start slower than it had anticipated.
Although EA has already released the Gundark out of the bag the announcement of the development of several exciting Star Wars games developed, the company disclosed that 3 to four additional projects not yet announced are in effect.
Apex Legends is now available for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.