Warfighter’s Failure Damages EA and Medal of Honor Brand, Analyst Says

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes that the recent critical failure of Medal of Honor: Warfighter will permanently harm both the franchise’s brand as well as Electronic Arts’ image among gamers.

The Medal of Honor series received a reboot back in 2010 that wasn’t that well received, despite managing to deliver a decent first-person shooter experience.

Now, EA has just released a sequel subtitled Warfighter last week, which quickly reached impressive sales. Sadly, much to the company’s surprise, reviews haven’t been that great, as the game now has a critical review average of around 50 on aggregator website Metacritic.

According to analyst Michael Pachter, the new game will end up causing a lot of harm both to its franchise and to EA’s image among its loyal customers.

“With an average score of only 50, the game is likely to fall short of revenue expectations by $100 million or more. Perhaps more importantly, the poor performance of Medal of Honor makes it highly unlikely that EA can deliver significant digital revenues from DLC subscriptions next year, and sets the company up for a disappointing comparison to the $204 million in digital revenues it expects from Battlefield this year,” the analyst noted, via GamesIndustry.

What’s more, this lackluster release will put a damper on EA’s plan to carve away at the dominance of Activision’s Call of Duty series in the first-person shooter arena.

"These missteps should not be taken lightly. A few years ago, EA management set forth a strategy to displace Activision as king of the first-person shooter heap, and said it intended the duo of Medal of Honor and Battlefield to alternate releases and slowly take share from Activision," Pachter added.

"Warfighter's review scores may have destroyed chances for sequels in the all-important first-person shooter segment of the market. We think that low review scores will impair EA's (and the Medal of Honor brand's) reputation with those who pre-ordered the game or bought it as soon as it was released (likely some of EA's most dedicated customers), and believe EA alienated at least a small portion of these gamers."

Considering that next year we’ll get to see Battlefield 4, EA will have some time to think about the Medal of Honor series and if it wants to continue working on it.