GameStop spokesman Tony Bartel recently told investors that several of the newest releases from this quarter, including Star Wars Battlefront, were underperforming in sales. EA COO Peter Moore has denied those statements, however.
“We’re not going to quantify it in terms of actual numbers,” he said, “but we had high expectations that diminished somewhat as it got closer and it failed to hit those lowered expectations.”
Now Moore has expressed that Bartel’s comments were a “little bit of a surprise,” continuing, “…from our perspective I’m here to reaffirm our guidance of 13 million units sold in for the fiscal year.”
“There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title and I want everybody understand that based on where we think this title is and based on the marketing beats ahead of us, in particular the movie launch over the next two weeks, we feel very comfortable we’re going to hit the guidance that we’ve given analysts, investors and Wall Street alike.”
Board room drama! GameStop did not have a great third quarter, but hopes stay on trajectory to hit its end-of-the-year goals through hardware and digital sales over the holiday season.
Star Wars Battlefront is one of the highest-profile releases of 2015. A multiplayer shooter, it aims to pull young gamers and lapsed gamers into the fold with high-fidelity graphics and fast-paced action. But analytics firm InfoScout published a post-Black Friday chart that showed Star Wars Battlefront coming thirteenth on the list of most-sold games for the holiday.
That being said, Moore’s point stands: “The Force Awakens,” the next film in the Star Wars series, is coming out on December 18. If well received it could reignite interest in Star Wars that may have waned among the general public (especially those lapsed gamers) since the prequels. The next DLC for Star Wars Battlefront, called The Battle of Jakku, is drawn from events in the film.
