14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced better than expected financial results for the fiscal year that ended on March 31 and says that it is seeing the first results of its new digitally oriented strategy.
The company says that it has managed to beat expectations from analysts to post a non-GAAP revenue of 4.2 billion dollars (3.22 billion Euro) with the digital side of its business seeing an increase of 47 percent year-over-year in order to reach 1.2 billion (920 million Euro).
The biggest contributors to the good results include video games like: Mass Effect 3, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, FIFA Street and SSX.
For the last quarter of the year revenue was flat, but Electronic Arts says that this was due to a lower number of packaged retail releases, with digital distribution posting another increase of more than 40 percent.
FIFA 12 was the game that shone in the digital area, with game downloads and microtransactions linked to the football simulation generating 108 million dollars (82.8 million Euro) during the entire fiscal year and with FIFA Ultimate Team becoming one of the biggest successes for the company.
Full video game downloads also saw a big increase during fiscal 2012, with 76 percent more titles moved via the Original service, including high-profile releases like Mass Effect 3, the action and role-playing title from BioWare, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO from the same developer.
Electronic Arts has also highlighted the performance of its free-to-play video games, like Need for Speed World and Battlefield Heroes, which are said to be generating more than 2 million dollars (1.53 million Euro) during each week.
John Riccitiello, the chief executive officer at EA, has also announced during the earnings call that the company was already investing in the development of titles for the next generation of console.