The seventh season of battle royale game Apex Legends failed to meet Electronic Arts‘ internal expectations, the publisher admitted during its quarterly earnings call overnight.
Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, said during the call that while “Apex Legends is one of the strongest franchises and live services in the industry,” Season 17 of the shooter “did not meet our financial expectations.” He added that the season’s “new variations of gameplay and monetisation” were not enough to meet EA’s financial expectations.
Meanwhile, Stuart Canfield, CFO of the publishing giant, added:
Apex Legends is a highly successful original IP for EA with a strong community of loyal core players. This quarter, net bookings were below expectations largely driven by underperformance from Season 17.
As an evergreen live service that is constantly evolving, our teams continue to innovate on content and introduce new modes of play to engage a broader base of players across different geographies. To echo Andrew, we will continue to invest behind the talented team at Respawn to drive long-term expansion and growth of the franchise.
Looking ahead, Apex Legends Season 18 is scheduled to arrive on August 8, 2023, and is set to implement more changes to the game’s Rank system. The game originally launched back in February 2019 for PS4, PC, and Xbox One, and has since been spruced up for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, further expanding its fan base.
[Source – Dexerto]