During today's earnings report for its third fiscal quarter in the 2022 fiscal year, Electronic Arts announced the three months to December 31 was the biggest quarter ever for net bookings, underlying profitability, and cash generation. And it was all led by FC 25 Coins and Apex Legends.
At quarter-end, Apex Legends monthly active players were up more than 30% year-over-year, with 28 million players joining the free-to-play battle royale shooter in the past year alone. EA expects the game to reach $1 billion in net bookings this fiscal year (April 21 - March 22). EA proclaimed that Apex Legends players pinged locations, items, and enemies 322 billion times. It was obviously a huge year for the game.
The publisher also claimed that it now has more than 540 million unique active player accounts in its network, with an average of more than 180 million monthly active accounts through the reported time period. Players typically are spending 20% more time in EA games compared with the previous fiscal year.
According to Forbes, net bookings for the reported quarter sat at $2.577 billion, an increase of $177 million from the previous year. Electronic Arts' total net revenue came in at $1.789 billion, up by $116 million from Q3 2021. and net bookings for the trailing 12 months were up 22% year over year. And with the soft launch of Apex Legends Mobile rolling out in the near FC 25 Ultimate Teamure, these numbers should increase.
While tent pole games like Apex Legends and FC continue to be huge hits, there were some stunning admissions made during the earnings call about one noticeable miss.
“The launch of Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. Employees working from home because of the pandemic was a much bigger challenge than EA buy Fut Coins anticipated. The game encountered a number of unanticipated performance issues that needed to be fixed, and some of the game's core design choices simply didn't land well with the player community. Despite all that, developer DICE recently announced plans to improve the game over the coming months and EA still has plans to release major updates.