EA: SimCity has recovered from "challenging" launch

SimCity has sold 1.6m copies since navigating through and recovering from a challenging” launch –according to the game’s publisher, EA.

Speaking during an earnings call yesterday, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau touched briefly on how the game has moved on from the title’s rocky start with consumers – adding that digital downloads have made up almost half of the total sales.

I’ll start with Q4 and SimCity – a great game that has recovered from a challenging launch,” said Gibeau. The short explanation for the launch is that the initial rush of consumers overwhelmed our game service, disrupting the consumer experience.”

As we stabilized the game and improved service in the first week, fans continued to pour in. So far we are ahead of forecast with more than 1.6 million units currently sold through to consumers. The digital story is particularly strong – nearly 50 percent of those sales were high-margin digital downloads.”

In its most recent financial report, EA highlighted the game as one of the driving forces in a successful fourth quarter for the publisher’s fiscal 2013.