Apex Legends Has Raked in an Enormous Amount of Money for EA
When Bungie launched Destiny in 2014, it was one of the first major game releases that wasn’t an MMORPG to offer a live-service model that required players to be persistently online. Given the ongoing success of Destiny,other games like Tom Clancy’s The Division, Grand Theft Auto Online, and Apex Legends soon followed suit. Despite major differences in gameplay, these titles all share a similar monetization scheme that focuses on battle passes, paid downloadable content, or other types of microtransactions.
Large companies like Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft with hugely popular titles have seen incredible profits from their “games as a service” models. In 2021, Activision Blizzard earned $5.1 billion from microtransactions and DLC for games like Call of Duty: Warzone and World of Warcraft. HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact, which brings all of the gacha gameplay elements seen primarily in mobile titles to PC and PS5, has brought in $3 billion since it launched in September 2020. Clearly, live service has proven to be an extremely lucrative business model.
Apex Legends Mobile Release Date, Launch Roster, and First Exclusive Character Revealed
As part of its fourth quarter earnings call, Electronic Arts revealed that over 70% of its revenue comes from live-service titles. These include a number of games like Apex Legends, FIFA Ultimate Team, and Battlefield 5. In fact, Apex Legends alone has raked in $2 billion in earnings for the gaming giant since it launched in February 2019. And that number is only growing. EA’s CFO, Chris Suh, shared during the call that the revenue brought in by the battle royale shooter increased by 40% when compared to 2021, and the company expects that Apex Legends will eventually earn $1 billion per year.
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