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GRTV News - Dragon Age: The Veilguard didn't live up to EA's sales expectations

And neither did EA Sports FC 25 of all things.

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"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about EA, specifically Dragon Age The Veil Guard and EA Sports FC 25. Because, and the reason we are talking about it is because the latest bit of information has come out about how EA expected these games to actually perform. And obviously EA Sports FC 25 being a part of the EA Sports FC series, formerly known as FIFA, you kind of expect them to conquer the world. So anything less than that is kind of failing expectations I guess. But Dragon Age The Veil Guard is a very different beast and we know what EA was expecting that game to achieve and what it actually achieved. So with that being the case let's dive on in. So yes, Dragon Age The Veil Guard and EA Sports FC 25 failed to meet EA sales expectations. Can the new Mass Effect save Bioware from being shut down?
So Magnus is far from the only one that thought Dragon Age The Veil Guard is a great game but maybe not as impressive as fans of the franchise hoped. Top that with heated debates about the game being woke, a long development with massive changes and Bioware disappointing many with Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda. And it's understandable that many feared the beloved studio was in trouble. Tonight's news will definitely not change that. A press release from EA reveals that Dragon Age The Veil Guard only sold, or unengaged, approximately 1.5 million players in 2024. I write only because the giant publisher expected 3 million so the actual number is around half of that. What makes this even worse is the engaged part as it means that the 1.5 million includes the subscribers of EA's PlayPro service who played it for free. You might even count those who've played the free trial on EA Play."

"Now that Dragon Age The Veil Guard is the only game that has made EA lower its expectations for the fiscal year that ends on the 1st of April as EA Sports FC 25 also failed. The difference between these two is that EA expected the football franchise's increasing success to continue and it actually declined a bit. EA Sports FC 25 also has a chance to redeem itself with microtransactions and such which means that the only studio in real trouble here is Bioware. Not a fun press to have on your shoulders when one of your directors has just left and the new Mass Effect is still years away."

"So before we talk about Dragon Age, quick thing on EA Sports FC. I'm actually not surprised that it declined a little bit. Obviously when you split from FIFA and you do a massive sort of rebranding, you go from being called FIFA Games to become EA Sports FC, you kind of expect that to be a massive sort of, I don't want to say boost, but you know a massive sort of increase in influx of interest in the series and the games. And I think we got that with last year's game which I don't think was quite as good as it should be. This year's game, significantly better, still very much the exact same game that you get on an annual basis but a much better version of it. And I think that's why, I think that's why they've seen a little bit of a drop. I don't think you can expect these games to be, to continuously grow because I think they're sort of hitting the exact same audience every single time anyway. And plus it is also worth saying as well that data from GFK Entertainment recently has shown that EA Sports FC 25 was 2024's best selling game in Europe. So when we say that EA Sports FC 25 also failed expectations, EA's expectations for this series is astronomically high. Dragon Age The Veil Guard is a very different beast. Obviously the game came out in late October, so to say that it only engaged 1.5 million players, it basically means it only hit, it only reached that number in two months. But, it's a triple A title, a very expensive triple A title, that's part of a massive franchise and it's part, it was coming from a developer that in the past has been sort of one of the gold standards. The past that has, I wouldn't say has been something we've expected from Bioware in a good like decade almost, but there is history with this series, with this developer and they expect big things from whenever a new game comes out. Which is why they throw the 3 million figure out, which 3 million might sound like a lot, but when you think that Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 came out in September, around two months before Dragon Age, well less than two months before Dragon Age actually, and that game has recently hit 6 million players, meaning if you look at the same sort of time frame, Space Marine 2 is performing twice as well as Dragon Age. And I would assume that Saber Interactive and Publisher Focus Entertainment, they probably had very different expectations for what Space Marine 2 was going to achieve than what EA expects of Dragon Age. But anyway, 1.5 million players, again that doesn't translate to 1.5 million sold copies, that doesn't translate, we're not too sure what it translates to, because of the fact that it also includes the EA Play Pro subscribers, and that means we could be, out of that 1.5 million players, there could be people that booted the game up, played it for a couple of hours and then never touched it again. We're not talking, we have no idea about the engagement rates of this game here just yet. But the only thing that matters is that it's down from the 3 million that EA expected, so it's been half as effective and successful as EA hoped it would be. And again, if this is a smaller game, like a double A title or something like that, you'd probably say it's not performing as well as we hoped, but it's still doing quite well. BioWare, Dragon Age, EA expect huge things from them. And unfortunately this game hasn't done it, I personally played it, I thought it was a lot of fun, I'm less invested in the Dragon Age franchise I will say, but I enjoyed it. But it's hard to see this as anything but a trouble, a worry for BioWare, because Anthem was a catastrophic failure for them, Mass Effect Andromeda, didn't it land in the way that fans were hoping it would, and Dragon Age The Veil Guard has clearly not landed either. So you have to wonder whether Mass Effect 4 is, we're calling it Mass Effect 4, it's technically the fifth game, but Andromeda obviously didn't have a number next to it, so Mass Effect 4, 5, whatever frame it has."

"If you have to look at Mass Effect, the upcoming one, and think this is it, this is the do or die, and I have to assume that if it doesn't land, BioWare is going to be in trouble, because this is going to be 3, 4 major games, expensive big games that haven't performed, and it's taken them a long time to get them out as well. It's hard to say that, BioWare is a very, again, beloved developer that's done some great things in the past, but something's clearly wrong with the developer if it's not managing to attract the audience as it used to. But again, we'll pay attention to this and see how things change. Generally speaking though the one thing to note is that games start off really strong, same with anything, when it launches, when it just debuts, there's a lot of attention, a lot of attraction to it, and over time it slowly dwindles. So if it's only sold, or only hit 1.5 million players in 2024, I can't imagine Dragon Age The Veil Guard is going to get a massive influx of players any time soon. Maybe if it eventually gets included on Game Pass through EA Play, I say when, you know, if, I say it's more when that happens, maybe there'll be a bit of a jump then, but I can't imagine we'll see a huge jump of players any time soon."

"But either way, the thing to note is that it hasn't exactly gone particularly well for Bioware Dragon Age The Veil Guard. Critical reception was fine I would say, but yeah, clearly the player numbers aren't there. But anyway, that's all the time I have in today's episode of GRTV News. I will be back tomorrow for the last and final one of the week where we will most definitely be talking about something from the Xbox Developer Direct this evening, so stay tuned for that. Otherwise, thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. Take care everyone."

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