Respawn Entertainment has announced some pretty incredible numbers for its free to play battle royale shooter, Apex Legends. The game was both announced and launched on Monday, and has been extremely well received over the course of this week. After reaching a milestone of a million players in the first eight hours, the title has thus far amassed over 10 million in its first three days. Equally as impressive is the record number of concurrent players -- the game breached one million people playing at the same time, which is no mean feat.
Here's Respawn CEO Vince Zampella's statement on the early success of Apex Legends:
In 72 hours, over 10 million players have jumped into Apex Legends and we’ve breached 1 million concurrent players!
This has been a truly incredible journey. We tested and tweaked. We argued and agreed. We got to a point where we felt some magic. We knew it would be risky to take the franchise in this direction, to go free to play, and do a surprise launch. But we fell in love with Apex Legends and wanted, needed, other people to play it too.
We hoped you’d love it as much as us, but never in our wildest dreams could we have expected the outpouring of support and positivity we’ve seen. From all of us at Respawn, thank you for giving us and Apex Legends a chance. Thank you for joining us on this journey. This is just the beginning! We have so much more in store for you this year.
It would be easy to dismiss these figures - Fortnite attracted 10 million people just for a 10-minute concert - but given the game has only been available for a few days, it's a pretty impressive accomplishment. We imagine Respawn is very happy with the performance of Apex Legends so far, and as Zampella points out, it's still very early days.
[source ea.com, via dualshockers.com]
Comments 15
It is a great game, I watched my son playing a bit last night and it just looks fantastic and he is 100% sold on it. If a game can overcome the EA hate to become a overnight success that has to be one great gaming experience. And great news for Respawn. I loved the Titanfall 2 Single player, so happy they seem to be resisting the EA Borg assimilation process. Resistance is not futile !
@BarFooToo The EA hate is blown out of proportion. It's mostly among hardcore gamers. The average gamer couldn't care less.
That's a great start and from what I've seen online it looks a lot of fun and I may give it a go and I say that as someone who hates EA and isn't a big online gamer. I did love Titanfall 2 so know that these guys are good at what they do
It's the most fun I've had playing battle royale, that's for sure.
This is pretty impressive, especially considering I hadn’t even heard of it before a couple days ago. And the game title is so generic, it would have been easy to just ignore. I probably won’t play it, but the hype for it is making me at least consider it.
And if you read about what Epic are doing with Fortnite and trying to lure players away like 4x the amount of money received for curators if they managed to sell loads of v bucks etc. Im giving this a go tonight Apex see what it's like
Might have to give it a try at the weekend
An outstanding achievement. Got to give credit to EA as well for the way it's rolled this out. Flawless victory!
This is the first Battle Royale game that I've enjoyed. Definitely be playing it lots more.
@naruball it's only about 8 in the morning and I've already read something stupid on the internet.
No kidding, it's the best BR game out now.
@naruball
Enthusiasts, or the hardcore audience, are often used as significant indication of where trends are going.
The average gamer couldn't care less, and that's highly likely, but to say that EA's eggregious monetization practices, their tone deaf marketing campaigns, their unrealistic sales goals, their self aggrandizing and antagonising of their consumers and potential consumers, and their constant shuttering of beloved studios is blown out of proportion is narrow minded and shortsighted.
It certainly matters to investors when deciding whether or not they should sell their stocks in this company.
This is relevant because EA's stock is the lowest it has ever been in 20 years. It's a significant dip.
It certainly matters to the gamers that love the franchises that these practices that are now in those games.
The average gamer won't or don't look at this data, and you could argue that they don't care.
However, that arguement becomes disingenuous when it can be just as easily argued that they just don't know about it.
It's not blown out of proportion by any means, and
It isn't hate. It's just information that EA itself provides. It's in their games.
@Constable_What
See, it's hard to take someone seriously when they're arguing as if they were stating a fact and leave no room for a different opinion.
You're confusing quite a few things. I wasn't arguing that the hate against EA is unjustified or anything. I don't even care about that and haven't personally bought an EA game since Inquisition because nothing they released interests me. I was referring to the type of person who spends so much time online, they lose touch with reality. They think everyone hates EA and that because of that, EA games won't sell well, while reality shows that this isn't the case:
1. BF2 sold more than 7 million copies in just a few months. It's one of the best selling games of the year. Games that are praised to death haven't sold even half of that (Nier, Nioh, Persona 4, most ps4 exclusives. The list goes on).
2. Fifa still does exceptionally well. But how if everyone hates EA and their hate for EA will prevent them from buying games, as many here are suggesting?
3. This very game was downloaded more than 10 million times in just a few days. How much power does hate for EA actually have? I'd say limited. You see it everywhere online, but the average gamer will buy what he wants to buy and respect for a company won't be a factor in that.
As for the stock market, this isn't about whether they sell well (many of which do), but what they have promised investors and how much it cost them to make and advertise them.
@naruball
I wasn't stating a fact. No where in my post did I ever state that I was stating a fact. I was however offering an objective opinion. An opinion based on the information that I have. I'd appreciate it if you didn't attempt to misrepresent my arguement, and I will call it out. Thanks.
I wasn't confusing anything, you seem to be the one that is confused. Let me clarify.
You stated that the EA hate was blown out of proportion. You then go on to clarify that the people you are talking about. I see those people as well, but it is incredibly dissengenuos to say that because of those people the hate is blown out of proportion.
I fundamentally disagree with that; how is this hate being blown out of proportion?
Because the games are still selling well?
They are not selling as well as previous games, and they are not meeting EA's projected sales goals. We don't know how much these games and the studios cost to maintain, we don't know how much profit they are anticipating in order to reassure their investors, and we have no idea why they have such seemingly unrealistic sales goals.
In response to point (1)
We can compare them to other titles from other publishers... We could, but that only yields irrelevant information. There are a number of variables you did not consider when you mentioned primarily PS4 games which I will now outline:
Those games you listed all launched exclusively on the PS4 console. Nier was released on PC about a month after and released on Xbox One around a year after, and Nioh was released on PC around 9 months after.
This significantly eats into sales numbers by just considering that these games were not, and for PS4 exclusives, cannot be played outside of the PS4 platform.
A lot of these games you mentioned are incredibly niche. I find it highly suspicious you did not mention more mainstream titles such as God of War or Spiderman... Although I'll chalk that up to an oversight. See Hanlon's Razor.
In response to point (2)
FIFA still does very well, but did it do as well as it did in previous iterations? No. It did not. As I remember EA blamed the disappointing (note: I'm using EA's own metric for disappointment here for the fairest possible meaning of the word) sale of FIFA 19 on FIFA 18.
( https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/02/05/electronic-arts-inc-ea-q3-2019-earnings-conference.aspx )
I got this information from an earnings conference call transcript from the Motely Fool. Have a look if you're interested.
You state that: how if everyone hates EA and their hate for EA will prevent them from buying games, as many here are suggesting?
I never said that everyone hates EA, that their hate will prevent anyone from buying their games, and I'm not a part of that group. I have my own thoughts about why I disagree with your statement that the hate is being blown out of proportion. To be clear, and to reiterate, I don't think that the hate is being blown out of proportion, and I have information that information my opinion on why I don't think that.
In response to point (3)
This is an excellent point. I actually really like Apex Legends. It's fun, it's free, it's monetized appropriately, and I genuinely hope it continues to do well.
However, it doesn't change the information we already have, does it? Battlefield V, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Mass Effect Andromeda, FIFA 19, these games did not meet the sales expectations set by EA, and they were also highly criticized by many in the industry. Namely consumers and the media.
So what's my point? Simply put, Apex Legends is a a good game made by developer that people greatly respect. It's free to play. Aside from locked characters, nothing that you can purchase effects gameplay, and even those characters can be unlocked through about a week of casual gameplay. 1 - 2 hours a day.
Vince Zampella said, on Twitter, that he was overwhelmed by the reception of Apex Legends. It's doing better than anyone anticipated because it wasn't something that anyone expected from EA. Something reasonable for the price of free of course.
The other games that EA has released are, well, many people don't see them that way. Mediocre at best and terrible at worst gets thrown around a lot for a variety of reasons that I'm sure you've heard before. Namely, iterative and boring design, eggregious and predatory use of microtransactions and loot boxes in full priced games, providing poor excuses as justification for those microtransactions, terrible writing, lack of content, the usual suspects in an EA game that have been steadily getting more and more intolerable as the years go on.
So we have one game that is clearly doing as well as EA anticipated or better, and a few games that did not do as well as EA anticipated.
To clarify on why I am going with EA's metric of disappointment, it is because we do not have much if any information on why EA has these seemingly unrealistic sales goals.
If they didn't think they could hit those goals, then why would they promise those figures in the first place and risk panicking the investors? They wouldn't. It's far too risky.
The stock of a company represents the trust (Trust as in the accrued capital, or wealth, of a company and how it translates to investors as far as said investors keeping their money invested in those stocks) that investors and shareholders have in EA. If they're not meeting goals they're setting themselves, then they are losing trust, and it is risky to invest, and prudent to pull your money from that company.
When a stock goes down, a company loses trust, and if you can't trust a company, then you shouldn't invest in it.
This is conclusion of my arguement. Below is an explanation of what stocks are if you're at all interested in that. Thank you for reading and replying.
Stocks also don't really account for sales (which you know already), advertising dollars, or overhead such as making games. As silly as it sounds, it is just trust.
When you purchase a stock, you are giving a company money so that they can do what they do. The intent is that that company will be successful, and when you convert your stock to cash it will be more than what you had put in before. You're essentially buying a promise that you will get your money back along with a return on that investment.
However, if a company is making bad decisions, if they're missing their goals, if their games aren't selling as well, then there is a problem. You cannot get your money back from a company if that company doesn't have the money to pay you back. Some investors have millions of dollars tied up in investments! That's a lot of money to risk losing, so the rational thing is to withdraw your money before everyone else does, and the company goes bankrupt. Not saying EA will go bankrupt, I'm just explaining what stocks are.
Yeah not gonna read any of that ^^^
Slightly addicted to Apex so far, and I've never played a BR game before. Actually signed up to PS+ for it.
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