EA lowers Q3 guidance for soccer and other games ‘below performance’
Visitors play the ‘EA Sports FC 25’ game with England midfielder Jude Bellingham at the Electronic Arts booth during media day at the Gamescom video games trade show in Cologne, West Germany, August 21, 2024.
Ina Fassbender AFP | Getty Images
Electronic Arts On Wednesday, it lowered its full-year booking guidance, citing underperforming games, particularly soccer franchise EA Sports FC. The shares were down 7% in extended trading.
For the fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 31, EA said it will report net bookings of $2.215 billion, up from its previous guidance of $2.4 billion to $2.55 billion.
Revenue for the December quarter was about $1.88 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.11, the company said in a statement.
EA said it expects net bookings of between $7 billion and $7.15 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, below guidance of $7.5 billion to $7.8 billion. EA says net bookings increase physical game sales as well as revenue from online games.
The warning Since 1993, the most popular soccer video game franchise shows weakness. It used to fall under the FIFA branding, but in 2022 EA’s deal with FIFA ended and the last two EA soccer games were sold as EA Sports FC.
The company “Dragon Age” is a role-playing game for game consoles such as Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox had 1.5 million players in the quarter, underperforming the company’s estimates by 50%.
“We continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio during Q3,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a statement. “However, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 performed below expectations from net bookings.”
EA said that while its soccer franchise, which it calls Global Soccer, has posted two years of double-digit growth across the network, it started to slow down in the December quarter. The company said it expects global soccer sales to decline year-over-year, and subscriptions from online sales or live services will also decline by the end of 2025. He said he owns the majority of the company’s football franchise. Lack of live services.
EA says the recently revamped FC 25 with new content, improved gameplay and an annual “Team of the Year” update has been well received by players.
The warning comes weeks ahead of EA’s scheduled third quarter earnings on February 4.