Ultimate Team microtransactions now make up 28% of all EAs sales – more than FIFA itself.
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Big publishers like EA and Activision are increasingly seeing more and more of their profits come from microtransactions, rather than the sale of video games themselves – and EAs latest financial results have revealed just how unbalanced that relationship is becoming.
As the modern-day equivalent to collecting Panini stickers, Ultimate Team in general last year accounted for a staggering 28% of the companys net revenues.
Although EA has tried to add microtransactions to many of its games (sometimes with limited success, as exemplified by the infamous Star Wars: Battlefront II) its the Ultimate Team mode in its various sports games where theyve always proven the most popular.
EA didnt break down any of the statistics by individual games, with only a vague admission that a substantial portion was down purely to the FIFA franchise – where Ultimate Team has always been especially popular.
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The numbers are going up every year, sitting at 16% of total revenues in 2017 and 21% in 2018.
But even that 2017 figure is more than what EA make from sales of FIFA itself, with revenues from FIFA 19 accounting for only 14% of net sales last year.
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At the moment, 55% of EAs revenues come from the actual sale of games, with everything else down to microtransactions and other live service products like EA Access.
That percentage decreases every year though, and will almost certainly reach the halfway point by the start of the next generation,Read More – Source
