While Disney's Star Wars: The Force Awakens is breaking box office records, it isn't the only Star Wars property experiencing success. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, Electronic Arts' multiplayer shooter Star Wars Battlefront has sold about 12 million copies since launch in mid-November.
Pachter estimates that EA's blockbuster shooter sold approximately 6 million in November, with an additional 6 million in December. He figures the sales have generated approximately $660 million in revenue — a solid start for the first game in EA's long-term licensing deal with Disney and Lucasfilm.
Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson, senior research analyst, is a little more generous in his estimation. He estimates that EA has sold as many as 13 million copies of Battlefront, although he believes most came before the movie was released and at a discounted price.
That being said, it's hard not to attribute Battlefront's success to the buzz surrounding all things Star Wars, especially with the December release of The Force Awakens. The game itself, while praised for its beauty and design, has been criticized for its casual approach to gameplay. While fun in short spurts, Battlefront's biggest criticism is that much of its content — new maps, modes, characters, etc. — is still locked behind a season pass for an additional $50. Because of that, it simply feels that at launch there's not much content to hold your attention.
In the end, even the power of the Force wasn't enough to dethrone the king of the holidays — Call of Duty. In November 2015, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was the best-selling title, followed by Fallout 4 and then Star Wars Battlefront.
Star Wars Battlefront is presumably just the first in a long line of Star Wars blockbuster games from EA. In December, we learned EA and its Visceral studio are working on an open-world RPG set in the Star Wars universe.
[Fortune]
