In 2019, Electronic Arts released the computer game Anthem , an MMO where everyone was “Iron Man”. Despite a relatively strong start, problems quickly emerged in the game, and eventually, the development of the game was frozen while EA planned a reboot. However, nothing came of the reboot, and Anthem died in February 2021. Now we know the reason for this, the sales figures have been revealed.
What is the new information about Anthem?
- A former marketing manager at EA, Alexandre Scriabine, has shared his successes at EA on LinkedIn and also listed the sales figures of Anthem there. A Twitter user published a picture of these figures.
- Anthem sold 2 million units in the 1st week and 5 million units over its entire lifespan.
- Thus, it is clearly the weakest performer among the games listed by the EA manager: games like Battlefront (50 million units) or Battlefield 1 (21 million units in year 1) perform much better.
Sales figures apparently collapsed after just one week
Why are the sales figures so disappointing? As media reports suggest (via gamespot), EA had relatively modest goals for Anthem, but even those weren’t ultimately met by Anthem.
As the then EA CEO stated back in May 2019, the sales figures for Anthem at launch did not meet EA’s expectations:
- They wanted to sell 5-6 million units in the first month after release.
- As we now know, the title sold only 5 million units over its entire lifespan.
Negative vibe after the launch apparently doomed Anthem
What was the problem? As the numbers suggest, Anthem sold quite well at launch, in the first week, but it then lacked longevity.
When the many problems became apparent and the reputation of Anthem suffered, the sales figures of Anthem must have crashed and never rose again to a reasonable level.
When you see that EA sells 21 million units with other titles like Battlefield 1 or that it had 50 million registered players within 28 days for Apex Legends, EA probably made the hard decision not to invest more time and money in Anthem.
For MMO players, ultimately a significant setback. The poor performance of Anthem in 2019 contributed to the current MMO crisis we have been experiencing for the past 5 years.
At the end of Anthem:
