FIFA Ultimate Team makes EA £28.5m
Battlefield 1943 does the business, too.
Virtual trading card game FIFA Ultimate Team has so far generated a whopping £28.5 million for EA.
PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade shooter Battlefield: 1943 made £10 million – after Sony and Microsoft took their cut.
Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown revealed the impressive figures at the 38th Annual Media and Communications Conference (reported by GameSpot).
In FIFA Ultimate Team – a downloadable expansion for the main FIFA series – players create fantasy squads by buying virtual cards and trading them with others.
"We see people spending $500, $600, $700 on digital card packs to play Ultimate Team simulation mode," Brown said.
FIFA 09's Ultimate Team made $15 million in revenue. Development costs were in the single-digit millions. FIFA 10's Ultimate Team raked in $30 million. That's $45 million in total.
FIFA 11 numbers aren't final yet, but given the game's been a critical and commercial success, the graph no doubt points upward.
Meanwhile, Brown revealed the DICE-developed Battlefield: 1943 reaped $16 million. The game cost in the single-digit millions to build.
Both games contributed to growing digital sales for the mega publisher. EA expects 20 per cent of its revenue - about $750 million – to come from digital sales for this fiscal year. Do you contribute to that?