Star Wars Battlefront Failed to Meet GameStop Sales Expectations
If the words of GameStop COO Tony Bartel are any indication, the new Star Wars Battlefront franchise reboot released earlier this month did not meet initial sales expectations. Besides a less than impressive rating on Metacritic, Star Wars Battlefront “failed to hit” the high expectations of GameStop. Deadline reports that Bartel told analysts that the game did not meet sales expectations for the video game retailer.
Bartel stated, “We had high expectations that diminished somewhat as it got closer, and then it failed to hit those lowered expectations.” As a result, GameStop had lower than expected financials for the quarter that ended in October. The chain’s shares dropped 4.2 percent. Battlefront publisher Electronic Arts saw its own shares fall 4.8 percent.
GameStop CFA Robert Lloyd did did add that GameStop is hoping sales for the game could pick up for the holiday shopping season, saying, “We expect Star Wars to be one of the strongest titles for the holiday season. So we expect it to get back towards on-track for our expectations.” Also, the release of the new film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, on December 18 could also help sales for the game.
In defense of Battlefront, the chain also admitted that sales were disappointing for Halo 5: Guardians and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. In other words, the drop in retail sales could be a result of the increase of digital downloads across the board for the game industry. According to Barclays analyst Christopher Merwin: “It’s very likely that an increase in digital sales for Star Wars helped contribute to the lower-than-expected physical sales of the title for GameStop.”
Regardless, the report indicates that Merwin expects EA will sell about 13 million copies of Star Wars Battlefront before the end of the fiscal year in March 2016. If EA is disappointed by sales of the game, one could point out some definite issues. There is no single-player campaign for the game. In addition, it’s a Star Wars game with no actual space battles. Previous Battlefront games still had space battles.