News

FIFA success dominates EA’s financial report for Q1 FY2019

Publishing giant brings in a net revenue of $1.14 billion this quarter

FIFA success dominates EA’s financial report for Q1 FY2019

EA’s preliminary financial report for Q1 FY2019 revealed a strong showing for the publisher’s classic footie franchise FIFA.

Gross profit for the three months ending June 30th 2018 came to $922 million, a 29 per cent decrease year-over-year.

Overall net revenue came to $1.14 billion, 22 per cent lower than the $1.45 billion over the same period last year.

Digital net bookings for the trailing 12 months increased to $3.5 billion, up 13 per cent year-over-year and represents 69 per cent of total net bookings.

Mobile accounted for $147 million of those net bookings, down two per cent year-on-year due to slight declines in older titles. Monetisation in The Sims Mobile was said to have started slowly, but the drop was offset by the success of FIFA Mobile’s Asia performance.

Back of the net

Much of the period’s strength has been attributed to the success of FIFA, particularly in Asian markets. FIFA Mobile launched in China this, reaching number one on the top downloads chart for iOS. EA added that, while early days, the game had "delivered one of the highest grossing days ever for any of our mobile titles".

“We started the year strongly as we continued to deliver on our growth strategies with a focus on new genres, new geographies and building engaging live services across our portfolio to drive recurring revenue,” said COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen.

“We have a strong slate of products to launch through the rest of the fiscal year, great content coming in our live services, and are continuing to grow our esports competitions.”

On FIFA Mobile’s China launch, CEO Andrew Wilson added: “It is still early days, but the game delivered one of the highest grossing days ever for any of our mobile titles and hit number one in the iOS download charts."

This quarter also saw the audience for four-year-old lifestyle-sim The Sims 4 grow 35 per cent year on year.


Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.