EA won’t be raising the price of its games, as the company aims to “deliver incredible quality and exponential value for our playerbase”.
During the company’s latest earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson responded to a question on whether it would be following the likes of Nintendo and Xbox in raising the price of its new releases this year.
Wilson noted how the “pricing power” of the business is very different today than a decade ago, with physical releases a “significantly smaller” part of the business and a range of price points from free-to-play to deluxe editions “and beyond”.
“At the end of the day whether we’re doing something that costs a dollar or we’re doing something that costs $10 or we’re doing something that costs $100, our objective is always to deliver incredible quality and exponential value for our playerbase,” said Wilson. “And what we’ve discovered over the course of time is whether we can marry quality and value together, our business is strong, resilient and continues to grow.”
EA CFO Stuart Canfield surmised the company has “no changes in the current strategy at this point”.
The company’s latest financial report states EA’s net bookings for the last financial year totaled $7.355bn. It’s essentially flat, with FY24 totalling $7.43bn and FY23 totalling $7.34bn, evidence of the resilience Wilson spoke of.
Interestingly, live services represented 73 percent of total net bookings for the latest financial year. Further, EA’s American Football franchise exceeded expectations by reaching over a billion in net bookings, helping EA Sports to its biggest net bookings year ever.
The Sims also had “double digital growth” in the most recent quarter, while Split Fiction has now sold almost 4m units since its release in March.
In short, the company is doing very well. And with the continued success of its annual sports games and high revenue generated from live service games, there’s clearly no need to raise the price of its games just yet.
Speaking to wider economic factors, Wilson said: “Even in a world where we may not be immune from a meaningful macro-economic downturn, we do believe that we will be resilient and we do believe that we can grow over the course of time through that.”
Nintendo has been criticised by fans for raising the price of its games with Switch 2, as its flagship launch game Mario Kart World will cost £75/$80. The company has since stated this is not a new “benchmark” but an example of “variable pricing”.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has raised the price of its Xbox consoles, with some new games rising to $80 by the end of the year.