If the witch hunt regarding Rise of the Tomb Raider wasn’t rife enough for you, EA’s Peter Moore has come out defending the sales of their latest blockbuster title Star Wars Battlefront after Gamespot COO Tony Bartell claimed that the game couldn’t reach their ‘lowered expectations’ in sales during the week it launched.
Star Wars Battlefront launched in the November month alongside Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Fallout 4. Gamespot COO claimed that they had high expectations for the launch of Star Wars and Halo 5, but neither lived up to these expectations. Microsoft however released official numbers during the first week of Halo 5’s release stating that the game broke a sales record for the franchise with over $400 Million during the first week.
“[GameStop’s] comments were interesting and little bit of a surprise to us particularly as the CFO in the call then started to correct the COO [Bartel] as the call went on, So from our perspective I’m here to reaffirm our guidance of 13m units sold in for the fiscal year.”
EA confirmed that the game will ship 13 Million units during the financial year, stating that the game is reaching their expectations. Earlier some estimates have placed games like Rise of the Tomb Raider at 301000 units during the first week, yet no official numbers have been issued by either companies. Star Wars Battlefront and Rise of the Tomb Raider have been performing very well digitally.
Gamespot and other physical retail locations are feeling the brunt of the rise of digital game downloads. EA also iterated that upcoming games like Mass Effect Andromeda will launch next year.
