Star Wars: Battlefront is still on track to sell 13 million copies this financial year, says publisher Electronic Arts, despite reports that the game is underperforming at retail.
Electronic Arts’ chief operating officer Peter Moore has told investors that Star Wars: Battlefront is selling strongly, reports Eurogamer. He was responding to earlier comments from GameStop’s chief operating officer Tony Bartel that indicated Battlefront was selling worse than anticipated at retail. Battlefront’s launch is timed to coincide with the release of the latest Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, and Moore says that’s going to help Battlefront hit its target and keep EA’s financial forecast on track.
“There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title,” said Moore, “and I want everybody [to] understand that based on where we think this title is, and based on the marketing beats ahead of us — in particular, the [Force Awakens] movie launch over the next two weeks — we feel very comfortable we’re going to hit the guidance that we’ve given analysts, investors, and Wall Street alike.”
Previously, Bartel had said of Battlefront, “We’re not going to quantify it in terms of actual numbers, but we had high expectations that diminished somewhat as it got closer and it failed to hit those lowered expectations.”
Responding directly to that claim, Moore said, “[GameStop’s] comments were interesting and little bit of a surprise to us, particularly as the [chief financial officer] in the call then started to correct the COO [Bartel] as the call went on. So from our perspective, I’m here to reaffirm our guidance of 13 million units sold in for the fiscal year.”
Battlefront’s first downloadable content released this week for anyone who preordered the game. The Battle of Jakku, which is set on the planet from the forthcoming movie, is available to everyone for free on December 8.