Apex Legends Isn’t Doing the Business for EA, So It’s Making Apex Legends 2.0 to Come Out After Battlefield
As Respawn’s battle royale Apex Legends nears its sixth birthday, EA has said it’s failing to do the business for the company, and outlined plans for what it called Apex Legends 2.0.
Speaking in a financial call on its third quarter results, EA said that Apex Legends net bookings (revenue) were down year-over-year, but performed in-line with the company’s expectations.
During a question and answers session with analysts, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked for an update on the performance of Apex Legends, and his response was clear: Apex Legends is a huge game with millions of players, but it’s simply not making enough money for EA.
“Apex is probably one of the great new launches in our industry over the last decade and has been loved by that core cohort and we've had over 200 million people play the game,” Wilson began. “However, the trajectory of the business of that franchise has not been headed in the direction that we have wanted for some time. We have been trying, tuning, and testing many things in the context of the ongoing support of the community.
“As we think about Apex today, I really think about the development happening across three core vectors. The first is how do we continue to support this incredible community that plays the game day-in and day-out, which numbers tens of millions of people, and that's both quality-of-life, anti-cheat, and all of the things that make the core experience great as well as the creation of new content for that community.
“And we continue to try and test and develop more and great content for that community. And I would say we have seen some progress in that, but probably not as much as we would have liked.”
So, what’s EA going to do to turn Apex Legends around in financial terms? Wilson said it’s working on a major update to the game, what he called Apex Legends 2.0, that sounds designed to reinvigorate the franchise, bring more people into the game, and, yes, make more money.
However, Wilson said he doesn’t want to release Apex
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