EA and Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends is still showing signs of major growth, and is starting to become a key part of the publisher’s financial structure.
In the company’s full-year results for fiscal year 2022, it indicated that the battle royale shooter’s growth is still going strong, with a 40 percent increase in net bookings year over year, and a report of the game’s “highest engagement” ever seen since its 2019 launch.
That net bookings increase helped drive an overall year-over-year 21 percent increase of $7.5 billion. 71 percent of those net bookings came from live service games (and “other” net bookings).
For the three-month period ending March 31, 2022, EA earned $1.8 billion in revenue (up 38 percent from the same quarter last year), and raked in $225 million in net income (up 196 percent from last year’s fourth quarter).
Those gains were lessened by financial struggles in the rest of 2022. Revenue for the full-year only rose 23 percent to $6.9 billion, and net income dropped 6 percent to $789 million.
What will drive EA’s financials in 2024? It might be one of the four unannounced games that it hinted at in today’s report. They’re currently slated to release in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023. The documentation indicates that these are games based on “a major IP,” “a partner title,” a remake, and a sports title.
This next year will also see EA release its mobile version of Apex Legends and a mobile game based on J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books.
EA is warning investors that next year’s financials may be impacted by external events. The company has “no plans” to restart business in Russia or Belarus due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, as well as changes in U.S tax law and financial exchange rates.