EA is confident Titanfall 2 can grow its player base

Titanfall 2 may yet achieve sales to match its critical popularity, EA has argued.

The game debuted last week but indicators suggest sales will fall far short of predictions. Conversely, Battlefield 1 is performing stronger than expected. With the game launching just days apart, the natural conclusion is that Battlefield 1’s gain has been Titanfall 2’s loss.

EA long argued that releasing the games so close to one another would not be a problem, and it’s an argument it has stuck to in its recent investor call.

We are working with Respawn to build a franchise. This is something that we plan to be working with them on for many, many years to come, and there’s huge opportunity inside of that franchise to continue to expand it. And so part of the strategy of building a franchise is you have a long view,” CFO Blake Jorgensen said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

One thing that people tend not to remember is when you have a title like a Battlefield or a Titanfall, those tend to sell extremely well in the catalog for at least another 12 to 24 months. And in the case of Battlefield in particular you’ll have all the premium services kicking in next year. We won’t see any of that in this year’s revenue. So it’s exciting times for our big franchises like that and huge opportunities for us to continue to monetize.”

EA CEO Andrew Wilson added: Respawn, who are an amazing studio who have built some of the greatest games over the last decade, have a real commitment to players, as do we as a company, and are looking to support and drive and grow and nurture that community over a number of years.

There is still a lot of things that they’ll be putting into the game for the foreseeable future. The expectation is that Respawn will continue to support and grow the Titanfall community through Titanfall 2. And over time we’ll work out what the right cadence for next version of Titanfall is and/or any other titles they’re working on.”