EA contests GameStop’s Star Wars Battlefront fears

Peter Moore has questioned the uncertainties posed by GameStop about the performance of Star wars Battlefront.

The retailer last month said that the game had failed to hit its already lowered sales expectations. EA’s COO, however, has said such a claim came as a surprise to him and that the publisher is sticking with its current sales forecasts.

"[GameStop’s] comments were interesting and little bit of a surprise to us particularly as the CFO in the call then started to correct the COO [Bartel] as the call went on," he told investors, as reported by Eurogamer. "So from our perspective I’m here to reaffirm our guidance of 13m units sold in for the fiscal year.

"There is no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title and I want everybody understand that based on where we think this title is and based on the marketing beats ahead of us, in particular the movie launch over the next two weeks, we feel very comfortable we’re going to hit the guidance that we’ve given analysts, investors and Wall Street alike."

Analysts have already questioned GameStop’s statement, with Michael Pachter having previously told CNBC that GameStop has betrayed its lack of understanding of the likely long tail Battlefront will enjoy through Christmas as hype for the film intensifies and more casual fans buy into the game.

"I actually think GameStop managements’ expectations were too high for Star Wars because they failed to anticipate how big of a gift that game will be," he said. "I think the GameStop guys fail to consider that ‘Star Wars’ is a gift game. Grandma is going to give it to little Johnny, period.”