14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Electronic Arts has announced that it has made a profit in the final fiscal quarter of the year, on the back of strong sales of videogames like first person shooter Battlefield: Bad Company 2, action role playing game Mass Effect 2 and action adventure Dante's Inferno. The company managed to get sales of 979 million dollars, which is an increase of 14% over the same period of last year, with profit reaching 30 million, quite an improvement over the loss of 42 million dollars registered in 2009.
John Riccitiello, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Electronic Arts, told investors that “We had an excellent fourth quarter, driving record-breaking non-GAAP revenue in the fiscal year. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 outperformed, which contributed to revenue at the high end of our guidance range, and we exceeded our expectations on the bottom line.”
When looking at the entire past fiscal year, the company does not look so good. It saw overall sales fall year over year and is still posting a loss, albeit a smaller one than the market expected.
On the upside, Electronic Arts says five videogames it launched during last year managed to sell more than 5 million copies: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Need for Speed: Shift, FIFA 10, Madden NFL 10 and The Sims 3. The publisher also points to the strong performance of Battlefield 1942 out exclusively on the PlayStation Network and on Xbox Live and has seen more than 1.5 million downloads.
EA is also looking to the future and hoping that it will succeed in attracting a lot of players with its major autumn release, Medal of Honor, the new first person shooter coming from DICE and EA Los Angeles. The company is preparing to show off its lineup for the PlayStation Move and the Project Natal motion tracking systems at E3.