FIFA Ultimate Team players played almost three times as many games last year

The number of FIFA Ultimate Team players is up 16 percent in EA’s financial year. However, the number of games played increased by 180 percent. EA’s income from live services continues to grow. FUT makes a significant contribution to this.

So far FIFA 21 has more than 25 million players, reports EA in its quarterly figures. It is not known how many players play the FUT mode, but the number of FUT games has increased remarkably during the past year of corona. This concerns the period from the beginning of April 2020 to the end of March 2021, when many lockdown measures were in place worldwide.

Apex Legends grew to 100 million players and according to EA, when Season 8 released in the fourth quarter, there were an average of 12 million active players every week. In total, the game has now brought in more than a billion dollars in sales since its release. In the next fiscal year, EA believes Apex Legends will generate sales in excess of $ 750 million.

The number of players on The Sims 4 grew to 36 million and EA reports that 62 percent of console games sold in the past year were digital versions. A year earlier that was 49 percent.

EA’s merits live services continue to increase. This includes subscriptions, microtransactions and in-game purchases. This category accounted for 82 percent of quarterly sales. According to EA, live services revenues were higher than expected due to the good performance of Apex Legends and FIFA Ultimate Team. EA does not provide separate figures for FUT.

Only 18 percent of quarterly sales came from full game sales. EA had revenues totaling $ 1.35 billion in the quarter. Annual sales were $ 6.2 billion, up 15 percent from a year earlier.