4 hours Ago By Derek Strickland
It sounds like singleplayer RPGs may be harder to greenlight at Electronic Arts moving forward as the publisher doubles-down on more guaranteed bets. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the third major BioWare game to miss the mark and EA has taken notice. The game did poorly enough to trigger a rare forecast adjustment from EA's executives, who had significantly lowered full-year earnings targets to reflect the disappointing sales of Veilguard (and the underperformance of EA FC25).
The magnitude of Veilguard's miss is even more pronounced when considering that EA had previously assigned a $20 billion market value to action RPGs . The news triggered a fresh wave of layoffs at BioWare, which has now been culled to a team of less than 100 people. BioWare is currently working on the next Mass Effect game, a singleplayer project that's entering pre-production phases of development.
New comments from EA leadership could indicate that singleplayer RPGs could be placed on the back burner in favor of more lucrative content, such as live services. This push-pull relationship between microtransactions and full games is an old dance for EA. During Q3FY25 results , EA CFO Stuart Canfield said this about Veilguard: In the prepared remarks to investors, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson remarked that BioWare's latest RPG was one of high quality and did not reveal the exact depth of Veilguard's miss.
Wilson also underlines the main pillars of what EA calls its "blockbuster storytelling strategy":.
