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Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes helps boost EA Mobile FY16 sales up 9% to $548 million

Big brand, big hit

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes helps boost EA Mobile FY16 sales up 9% to $548 million

EA (NASDAQ: EA) has announced its FY16 financials, for the 12 months ending 31 March 2016.

Total GAAP revenues were $4.4 billion, down 3% compared to FY15.

But thanks to console game Star Wars Battlefront, net income was $1.2 billion, up 32% year-on-year.

Generating $396 million during Q4 in terms of cash flow, EA ended its financial year with cash and equivalents worth $2.5 billion.

Best ever

Looking at EA Mobile, Q4 sales were a record $151 million.

That's up 11% year-on-year or up 18% compared to the previous quarter.

The main reason for the performance is Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, which is now EA Mobile's top grossing game globally.

Q4 is EA Mobile's first full quarter of recording the game's sales as it was released in mid-November 2015.

In terms of annual sales, EA Mobile generated $548 million, up 9% compared to FY15.

(The difference between GAAP and non-GAAP relates to when players spend in-game and when that in-game currency is actually consumed.)

EA's non-GAAP digital sales from 2014 to 2016

As well as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, other strong titles were Madden NFL Mobile - a top 10 iPhone grossing game in the US - and The Sims FreePlay, which has surpassed 200 million downloads and is a top 50 grossing game in the US.

Indeed, EA also surprisingly claimed it was "#1 most downloaded mobile game publisher in calendar year 2015", although this presumably ignores the massive thirdparty Android app stores in China. 

[source: EA IR]

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.