EA Financials Tout Apex Legends' Successes; Switch Release Coming March 9, Mobile In The Coming Year

Electronic Arts released its latest round of financial results yesterday, covering the period from October to December of 2020. For the quarter, the company reported net bookings of $1.673 billion and $5.956 billion for the calendar year, up 5% and 8% over the same quarter in 2019 and 2019 as a whole, respectively. COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen attributed the strong quarter to "live services outperformance in Ultimate Team and Apex Legends."

Respawn Entertainment's free-to-play battle royale, which just launched its eighth season of content yesterday, is still a bright spot for the company. It adds 14% to its player base every season, EA reported, with its player count growing by 30% year-over-year -- no doubt aided by its successful launch on Steam, where it still averages about 70,000 concurrent players and hit a new all-time peak of 183,863 yesterday.

A release on the Nintendo Switch is scheduled for March 9, and a mobile game is in the works for EA's FY22, which runs from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022. Jorgensen expects net bookings of $500 million for the game in 2021.

What about Star Wars: The Old Republic? Once again, it's entirely absent from the financial reports, not even getting a mention in the text as existing, much less turning a profit. Big MMORPGs rarely shut down entirely, so I don't think it's going anywhere, but the recent news of EA losing its exclusivity to create Star Wars games can't be seen as great news for the soon-to-be decade-old title.

You can find EA's financial reports on its investor relations site.