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That’s So Raven
Troy Fields
May 31, 2022
Welcome to Lootbox - a weekly newsletter covering the business side of video games.
What's in this Lootbox?
⚽️ EA Loses FIFA
📱 Shoot Your Shot on Mobile
✊ That’s So Raven
📷 Meme
⚽️ EA Loses FIFA
After 30 years EA & FIFA are ending their partnership. Reports suggest FIFA 23 will be the last FIFA branded EA Sports soccer (football?) title released. Future titles will be published under a new brand EA Sports FC.
It’s rumored that FIFA was asking EA to double their $150 million licensing fee.
EA’s FY22 earnings report showed there was more than 150 million EA Sports FIFA accounts, and their FIFA Mobile title saw 80% growth YoY. FIFA 22 was also 1 of 12 EA titles that generated more than $100M in revenue in FY22.
We’re thankful for our many years of great partnership with FIFA. The future of global football is very bright, and fandom around the world has never been stronger. We have an incredible opportunity to put EA SPORTS FC at the heart of the sport, and to bring even more innovative and authentic experiences to the growing football audience.
📱 ShootYour Shot on Mobile
A few weeks ago Fortnite sneakily made its way back to mobile devices through a partnership with Xbox Cloud Gaming.
2 weeks ago EA released Apex Legends Mobile, the mobile version of their PC/console mega hit that has generated more than $100M (probably a lot more) in FY22 according to EA’s earnings release (and reportedly more than $2B since launch in 2019).
Riot is currently aggressively hiring for the mobile version of their smash hit competitive FPS VALORANT.
After the massive disappointment of Battlefield 2042 last November, EA’s Battlefield franchise is already prepping the release of a mobile version of Battlefield.
Mobile gaming is huge. $93.2B huge and growing at +7.3% YoY.
newzoo.com
Honestly the best part of the chart above is that browser PC games are still going strong at $2.6B.
Mobile gaming has largely been dominated by non-Shooter genres, but with the success of PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile… publishers are ready to expand their IP into a hot medium.
✊ That’s So Raven
Last week Raven Software (Quality Assurance for Call of Duty: Warzone) voted to unionize.
It didn’t take long to count the vote with just a 30 person organization, but guess who owns Raven Software and now gets to negotiate with what is now called the Game Workers Alliance? Activision Blizzard 😂
Why is that funny? Microsoft is currently in the process of closing their $68.7B acquisition, and a new union certainly wouldn’t make it any easier. This is the very first union under Activision Blizzard.
QA is important to any industry, but game development specifically can be extremely demanding.
This could set the stage for a wave of new union efforts in the video game industry.
📷 Meme
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