Despite selling 7.3 million copies, Battlefield 5 did not meet EA’s expectations


Electronic Arts has announced that Battlefield 5 has sold 7.3 million copies in Q3 2018. However, and despite this huge amount of sales, EA stated that the game under-performed and did not meet its expectations.

To be honest, this reminds me of Square Enix’s astronomically expectations for the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, even though the game sold well across all platforms. Seriously, it’s ridiculous witnessing these laughably high expectations that publishers have for their franchises.

EA claimed that the prioritisation of the single-player campaign over its Battle Royale mode hurt the game’s sales, which again is laughable. If you’ve played Battlefield 5, you know that its single-player campaign was awful and nowhere close to be described as a proper single-player experience. DICE simply borrowed the bare-bones SP mode of Battlefield 1, but included less appealing stories and less content, resulting in an overall underwhelming SP experience (if you can even call it that).

Electronic Arts expected Battlefield 5 to reach 8.3 million sales so the game’s sales were 1 million lower than what the publisher anticipated. Still, and especially regarding all the controversy surrounding Battlefield V, it should be considered a success and not a “failure“.

Last but not least, EA stated that it has more “live services” plans for Battlefield 5 and that its battle royale mode, Firestorm, will arrive in March 2019.