EA Admits ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Has “Underperformed” With Only 1.5 Million Players, Says Results Are “Down Nearly 50% From The Company’s Expectations”
In giving official confirmation to the long-held assumption that the game released to a less-than-stellar reception, EA has admitted that the recent Dragon Age: The Veilguard has thus far performed well below the company’s previous expectations.
RELATED: ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Review – A Name Can’t Carry the Weight Alone
This update regarding BioWare’s latest game was provided to the public on January 22nd, courtesy of a ‘pre-announcement‘ regarding their upcoming Q3 FY25 financial results uploaded to the investor relations section of their official website.
Therein, the company explained that while their “initial guidance for fiscal year 2025 anticipated mid-single-digit growth in live services net bookings [defined as “the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in physically”],” the recent stumbles of both Veilguard and their EA Sports FC-related endeavors will instead result in “a mid-single-digit decline, with Global Football accounting for the majority of the change.”
“Global Football had experienced two consecutive fiscal years of double-digit net bookings growth,” explained the company of this lowered forecast. “However, the franchise experienced a slowdown as early momentum in the fiscal third quarter did not sustain through to the end. As a result, EA revises its outlook for Global Football to end the fiscal year down mid-single-digit at the midpoint of the new outlook. Separately, Dragon Age engaged approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter, down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.”
It should be noted that rather than sharing actual sales data, EA instead raised the metric of how many players “engaged” with Veilguard.
While it’s unclear just what behavior the company considers to fall under this label (though speculation suggests it may have something to do with the game’s free, timed trial via EA Play), EA’s word choice suggests that the amount of players who actually purchased a copy of the game is even lower.
Offering a personal comment to investors, EA CEO Andrew Wilson reiterated, “During Q3, we continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio; however, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations.”
“This month, our teams delivered a comprehensive gameplay refresh in addition to our annual Team of the Year update in FC 25; positive player feedback and early results are encouraging,” he concluded, curiously making no attempt to inspire optimism in Veilguard‘s future. “We remain confident in our long-term strategy and expect a return to growth in FY26, as we execute against our pipeline.”
Notably, while is the first time that EA offered a direct concession to Veilguard‘s underperformance, the company has previously indicated that the game was not the winner they had hoped.
Asked during a post-release interview with Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese if she could provide any insight into the game’s “commercial response”, game director Corrine Busch asserted, “There’s three axes we can measure this by: what the team was able to do and put together – the pride that they can take in that; every game that is made, especially in the triple-A space where you’re talking hundreds of developers, timelines, is a miracle. That they executed at quality: internally we consider that a success.”
“We’re very happy with the critical reception to the game,” she added. “It’s not common to have these challenging development cycles and have a team turn around and receive the critical reception that it did. In fact, in a lot of ways, that is the harder path to take. So yeah, we’re quite proud of the critical reception.”
“Unfortunately on the sales side, that’s not something we can really discuss, but of course as we know with Inquisition, that was a long burn to get to those total sales numbers,” she concluded.
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