Battlefield 5's Poor Sales Numbers Have Become a Disaster For Electronic Arts (seekingalpha.com)

dryriver writes: Electronic Arts has mismanaged the Battlefield franchise in the past -- BF3 and BF4 were not great from a gameplay perspective -- but with Battlefield 5, Electronic Arts is facing a real disaster that has sent its stock plummeting on the stock exchanges. First came the fierce cultural internet backlash from gamers to the Battlefield 5 reveal trailer -- EA tried to inject so much 21st Century gender diversity and Hollywood action-movie style fighting into what was supposed to be a reasonably historically accurate WWII shooter trailer, that many gamers felt the game would be "a seriously inauthentic portrayal of what WW2 warfare really was like." Then the game sold very poorly after a delayed launch date -- far less than the mildly successful WW1 shooter Battlefield 1 for example -- and is currently discounted by 33% to 50% at all major game retailers to try desperately to push sales numbers up. This was also a disaster for Nvidia, as Battlefield 5 was the tentpole title supposed to entice gamers into buying expensive new realtime ray-tracing Nvidia 2080 RTX GPUs.

Electronic Arts had to revise its earnings estimates for 2019, some hedge funds sold off their EA stock, fearing low sales and stiff competition from popular Battle Royal games like Fortnite and PUBG, and EA stock is currently 45% down from its peak value in July 2018. EA had already become seriously unpopular with gamers because of annoying Battlefield franchise in-game mechanisms such as heaving to buy decent-aiming-accuracy weapons with additional cash, having to constantly pay for additional DLC content and game maps, and the very poor multiplayer gameplay of its two Star Wars: Battlefront titles (essentially Battlefield with laser blasters set in the Star Wars Universe). It seems that with Battlefield 5, EA -- not a company known for listening to its customers -- finally hit a brick wall, in the form of many Battlefield fans simply not buying or playing Battlefield 5.

Comments

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Mashiki]

Or, you know... it's just not a very good game. Couldn't have anything to do with it, though, no - it's just those SJWs getting their just desserts! Of course!

No, they went out and catered to the SJW's then told people that "if they didn't like the agenda. To not buy it." So it looks like people didn't buy it. Then the guy who pushed it "left" the company. No no, it wasn't telling people to fuck off that cratered sales. It was just a bad game...or a combination of it was a bad game and telling their market to fuck off.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ashthon]

So instead they should cater to the misogynist, historically challenged incel gamers out there?

I think you need to get a clue. Let me explain what actually happened.

EA claimed they were "telling the untold stories of WW2," but what they instead did was to rewrite history to push feminist propaganda. The game tells the story of Operation Gunnerside in which a team of Norwegian commandos destroy a Nazi heavy water production facility. However, in the game EA/DICE have written the Norwegian commandos out of history. Instead, the team who destroy the Nazi facility is a strong, empowered, educated mother and daughter team, who are not only scientists but unstoppable soldiers who can physically overpower any man. Clearly, this isn't "telling the untold stories of WW2," but rewriting history to push an agenda. There's a video here which shows the game scenario and then explains what actually happened during WW2. It's quite long, but you only need to watch the first five minutes and you'll get the point.

The whole game was a work of propaganda, designed not to appeal to gamers, but to force feminist propaganda on players. Then, despite completely rewriting history, they told gamers they were "uneducated" and said, "if you don't like it, don't buy it," which is why so few people bought the game.

But hey, don't let reality get in your way. Just keep claiming it's all the fault of "historically challenged incel gamers." Moron.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[stealth_finger]

Can you tell me how many black females with amputations and prosthesis were fighting in WWII on the front lines?

Can you tell me how many made it into the final game? Oh yeah, zero. That shit was cut fast but you wouldn't be able to tell from all the people seemingly still frothing at the mouth over it.

Re:Far Cry 5 had similar controversy

[Shadow of Eternity]

BF5 pandered to SJWs, FC5 pissed off SJWs. That's the difference.