Anthem was supposed to be one of EA’s biggest releases of 2019 and a way for BioWare to regain fan confidence after the poor showing that was Mass Effect: Andromeda. Those plans have not exactly panned out. Now EA has confirmed that the game failed to meet the expectations the publisher had for its success, something which is surprising considering that the publisher did not think it would be a huge seller straight away.
Thanks to Seeking Alpha, who transcribed the company’s recent investor call, it has also become clear that EA is set to continue to support Anthem even if it means changing up the post-launch roadmap that had previously been outlined by BioWare.
“Anthem underperformed our expectations,” EA exec Blake Jorgensen said. “We continue to invest heavily in Anthem, with developers working on game quality, content, systems and game mechanics. It’s great original IP and we’ve doubled down on the product.”
Although Anthem may not have performed as well as EA would have liked, it did have the effect of boosting their digital sales significantly. According to data released in the investor call, the title sold far fewer physical copies than Mass Effect: Andromeda but made up for some of this in digital sales. This saw the publisher’s digital earnings for full games jump by 10% compared to the same period last year.
Anthem made headlines when it launched earlier this year. Players found a wide range of gameplay problems, from poor performance to tiny loot drop rates, that stunted its initial growth and led to a poor critical reception. Many PlayStation 4 users also reported instances of the game causing their console to crash. These issues followed stories about developers at BioWare having to work so long they were having to take time off work to deal with stress, depression, and anxiety.
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