FIFA 17 month one sales up 13% on predecessor

EA’s FIFA 17 most definitely HAS improved upon the performance of last year’s title FIFA 16.

There was an element of confusion surrounding the game’s launch, with GfK contacting the press to specify that changes to its sales tracking meant it couldn’t be sure if FIFA 17 had enjoyed a stronger Q1 than the previous year’s entry.

However, EA confirmed to MCV that this was definitely the case. And now CFO Blake Jorgensen has explained the extent of the improvement to investors.

Using the first four weeks of sales to make a true like-for-like comparison shows that FIFA sell-through is up 13 per cent year on year, and this speaks to how The Journey story mode has grown the market for our biggest franchise,” he said, as reported by Seeking Alpha.

Digital net sales were $486m, up $6m on the year-ago quarter. The increase reflects strong growth in mobile and in digital downloads. The long-term trend towards digital is clear in net sales for the last twelve months, which were $2.6bn or 57 per cent of the total.”

The exec added that Ultimate Team sales are up, too, climbing 23 per cent year-on-year.

Added CEO Andrew Wilson: More than 43m players engaged in our breakthrough EA Sports games across consoles and mobile devices during Q2. We introduced The Journey, FIFA’s first-ever story mode, which helped bring 20 per cent more players into FIFA 17 in the first week over last year’s game. To date, nearly 2/3 of all FIFA 17 players, spanning 183 countries, have engaged in this critically acclaimed new addition to the game.”