EA has cut its financial forecasts for the current fiscal year after EA Sports FC 25, its biggest moneyspinner by far, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard both underperformed at the end of 2024.While the company had been expecting a single-digit growth in “mid-single-digit growth in live services net bookings” – these encapsulate everything from game sales to DLC and microtransactions – the end result is that there will instead be a “mid-single-digit decline”.
The majority of this is to blame on a slowdown with EA Sports FC 25.While FC 25 will be the most to blame for the dip in financials, the underperformance of Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be more worrying for the company’s future direction.EA say that Dragon Age: The Veilguard “engaged” with around 1.5 million players during its release quarter, but this is down nearly 50 percent on the company’s expectations, and isn’t even an accurate description of total game sales.
This is a real shame after the game was generally well received by critics, and a long-awaited return to what BioWare is best known for.
Coming a decade on from Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game which won numerous Game of the Year awards in 2014, and which sold 12 million copies over its lifetime, The Veilguard is a big step back from that.
That said, it could certainly reach a wider audience through the first half of 2025, if EA push it through subscription services and with targeted promotional discounts.This naturally causes fresh concerns for the future of BioWare, and puts more pressure on their next game to succeed, with the studios focus having already shifted over to the next Mass Effect game.We had a good time with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, with Jason saying in our review, “The Veilguard is a beautiful-looking and highly enjoyable game, and a nice return to a more focused feeling RPG that does justice to both Dragon Age as a series and also to Bioware.