EA to shutter the Medal of Honor brand following Warfighter's "well below expectations" sales
Fuse delayed to Q2. FIFA 13 sold over 12 million units before New Years.
EA is putting its recently resurrected Medal of Honor brand out to pasture, following the "well below expectations" sales of its most recent entry Warfighter.
"Critics were polarized and gave the game scores which were, frankly, lower than it deserved," said EA COO Peter Moore during a recent financial call. "This one is behind us now. We are taking Medal of Honor out of the rotation and have a plan to bring year-over-year continuity to our shooter offerings."
EA Labels president Frank Gibeau added, "We're in a hit-driven business where it's about what you can build in a certain period of time and really deliver for the marketplace, and frankly we missed on Medal of Honor. And we take responsibility for that."
Elsewhere, FIFA 13 sold over 12 million units by the end of Q4 last year. This was a 23 per cent increase over FIFA 12 the previous year.
Battlefield 3 Premium has 2.9 million subscribers to date and has generated over $108 million in sales.
Looking at the big picture, EA's non-GAAP net revenue for the quarter was $1.18 billion, below the estimated $1.25 to $1.35 billion. EA blamed this squarely on Medal of Honor. The publisher's non-GAAP net revenue for the previous year was quite a bit higher at $1.65 billion, but the company noted that we are near the end of a console cycle, so some depreciation is to be expected.
Going into 2014, EA revealed that Insomniac's co-op shooter Fuse was pushed back into Fiscal Q1 2014, i.e. second quarter of calender 2013.
The publisher said it has high hopes for next week's release of Dead Space 3, which is looking promising with 44 per cent more downloaded demos than Dead Space 2. It also noted Crysis 3 pre-orders are up 40 per cent over that of Crysis 2's, while Sim City and Real Racing 3 are expected to be heavy hitters as well.