Star Wars Battlefront II Initial Sales Tumble 61 Percent Compared To Predecessor
Retailers in the United Kingdom had high hopes for Star Wars Battlefront II, at least before the uproar over microtransactions. The expectation was that Battlefront II would sell more copies than Battlefield 1, making it one of the highlights of the holiday season. And maybe Electronic Arts can still pull it off. However, sales are down compared to the first Battlefront game, and by a significant margin.
Keeping in mind that we are still talking about Battlefront II's performance in the UK, first week sales are down more than 50 percent compared to Battlefield 1, according to GamesIndustry.biz. Boxed sales figures are also down 61 percent compared to the first Battlefront game, released in 2015. Ouch.
Digital sales have picked up some of the slack, but overall Battlefront II is lagging behind the original Battlefront game. And for what it's worth, most of the sales have come on consoles—around 55 percent of Battlefront II sales have been on the PlayStation 4, followed by 44 percent on the Xbox One. Just 1 percent is on the PC, which is primarily a digital market at this point.
It's hard to tell how much of this is due to EA's decision to lock premium characters such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, and then make them time consuming (or costly) to unlock. One frustrated user complained in a Reddit post that the 60,000 credits required to unlocked these characters would take around 40 hours of gameplay. He further lamented that neither character is included with the $80 Deluxe Edition.
"This is a joke. I'll be contacting EA support for a refund," wrote MBMMaverick. "I can't even playing f**king Darth Vader?!?!? Disgusting. This age of 'micro-transactions' has gone WAY too far. Leave it to EA though to stretch the boundaries," the user wrote.
EA responded to the post saying it wanted to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes," which quickly became the most downvoted post in the history of Reddit. The negative attention continued to pile on, until EA finally decided to temporarily disable in-game purchases, and reduce the number of credits required to unlock heroes. It is a temporary measure, however, as EA looks to find a balance that between gameplay and microtransaction costs.
Keeping in mind that we are still talking about Battlefront II's performance in the UK, first week sales are down more than 50 percent compared to Battlefield 1, according to GamesIndustry.biz. Boxed sales figures are also down 61 percent compared to the first Battlefront game, released in 2015. Ouch.
Digital sales have picked up some of the slack, but overall Battlefront II is lagging behind the original Battlefront game. And for what it's worth, most of the sales have come on consoles—around 55 percent of Battlefront II sales have been on the PlayStation 4, followed by 44 percent on the Xbox One. Just 1 percent is on the PC, which is primarily a digital market at this point.
It's hard to tell how much of this is due to EA's decision to lock premium characters such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, and then make them time consuming (or costly) to unlock. One frustrated user complained in a Reddit post that the 60,000 credits required to unlocked these characters would take around 40 hours of gameplay. He further lamented that neither character is included with the $80 Deluxe Edition.
"This is a joke. I'll be contacting EA support for a refund," wrote MBMMaverick. "I can't even playing f**king Darth Vader?!?!? Disgusting. This age of 'micro-transactions' has gone WAY too far. Leave it to EA though to stretch the boundaries," the user wrote.
EA responded to the post saying it wanted to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes," which quickly became the most downvoted post in the history of Reddit. The negative attention continued to pile on, until EA finally decided to temporarily disable in-game purchases, and reduce the number of credits required to unlock heroes. It is a temporary measure, however, as EA looks to find a balance that between gameplay and microtransaction costs.
