Since 2010, games from the “Battlefield” franchise have ranked in the top 10 of the sales charts in North America. Battlefield 5 missed out on this in 2018. But why?
What numbers are we talking about? We are referring to the top list of best-selling games in the USA. This list comes from NPD – it’s not political, but stands for “National Purchase Diary,” a market research institute.
As they do every year, they released a list of which games sold best in North America in 2018. At the top are Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, and sports games.
But a franchise that usually appears whenever a new installment is released is missing from the top 10: Battlefield.
That’s why Battlefield 5 plays a special role this time: As the site Venturebeat points out, every Battlefield game released in this decade has been among the top 10 on these lists.
- 2010: Battlefield: Bad Company at rank 10
- 2011: Battlefield 3 at rank 4
- 2013: Battlefield 4 at rank 4
- 2015: Battlefield Hardline at rank 10
- 2016: Battlefield 1 at rank 2
- 2018: Battlefield V at rank 14
Did Battlefield 5 really sell that poorly? There are two caveats or at least particularities regarding this year’s list, which could suggest that BF5 might be doing better than its 14th place indicates:
- Battlefield 5 was released in the EA Origin Client – these numbers are not captured by NPD: Hence, digital sales on PC are missing; those from PS4 and Xbox One are included
- And the game was included in the “EA Origin Access Premier” pass – so there could be sales counted if players acquired BF5 through this subscription.
Overall, there’s a lot to suggest that Battlefield 5 actually fell short of expectations. Especially compared to the tremendous success of Battlefield 1, which set new benchmarks for the series.
What was different about Battlefield 5 this year? This year, several problems arose for Battlefield 5:
- A bad vibe right from the announcement with a controversy that Battlefield 5 is too colorful and places too much emphasis on being politically correct
- Then a staggered release without a Battle Royale mode – much content was pushed back, which was supposed to come later
- And there was simply a lot happening around the launch, with major releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the constant presence of Fortnite
At Venturebeat, they believe Battlefield 5 missed the “Battle Royale” hype that other games capitalized on. Why would people buy Battlefield 5 if they could just hop into Fortnite with their friends for free, they ask there.
For all these reasons, Battlefield 5 struggled particularly hard in 2018 to match the success of its predecessors. Battlefield 5 also seemed to have a hard time staying in the gaming public’s awareness with so much spectacle going on around it.
This is a problem of the new “Games-as-a-Service” world: Games that have been released take up space and do not go away quickly. This makes it difficult for new games to claim their time in the spotlight.
