EA masks true reasons for Dragon Age’s failure behind vague statements about growing demand for “shared-world features”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Financial highlights

• According to its Q3 report, Electronic Arts reached $1.88 billion in net revenue, down 3.2% compared to the same period last year.
• Net bookings fell 6.4% year-over-year to $2.2 billion. Live services accounted for 71.4% of the total.
• The top platforms by bookings were console (67.3%), PC (19.2%), and mobile (13.5%).
• Net profit was $293 million, up 1% year-over-year.
• Electronic Arts expects its full-year revenue to reach between $7.2-7.4 billion for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2025. Net income is projected to be $1-1.13 billion.
• “As we build on this momentum across EA, we are confident in a return to growth in FY26 and beyond as we bring our next wave of iconic entertainment to players and fans worldwide,” CEO Andrew Wilson said in a statement.

Global Football’s decline and other game results

• The Global Foobtall franchise’s net bookings have grown more than 70% over the last five years.
• EA Sports FC 25 “drove engagement levels above our expectations, with over two million Ultimate Team players re-activated from earlier in the launch cycle.”
• However, the game failed to maintain its strong momentum through the entire quarter. In an earnings call, EA CFO Stuart Canfield told investors that EA Sports FC 25 “softened through the holiday period.”
• As a result, the Global Football franchise saw a “mid-single-digit decline” in net bookings in the third quarter, with the lower-than-expected results were “only partially offset by continued growth in FC Mobile.”
• In Q3, EA Sports FC Mobile saw a double-digit increase in new players and engagement compared to the same period last year.
• The American Football franchise saw double-digit growth in weekly active users, with EA still expecting its full-year net bookings to surpass $1 billion.
• The next Battlefield game will launch in FY26 (from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026).

Why Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed

Wilson commented on the weak results of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which reached around 1.5 million players in two months and fell nearly 50% below the company’s expectations.

He noted that BioWare’s latest title didn’t achieve one of the three strategic objectives EA sets for its AAA single-player games (the so-called “blockbuster storytelling”):

• Create “authentic story experience” for the core audience;
• Build “innovative groundbreaking features”;
• Focus on high-quality launches on both PC and consoles.

Wilson believes that The Veilguard had a high-quality launch and received positive reviews from critics and core players, but it “did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”

This basically means the game failed to expand beyond its niche by offering innovative features. According to Wilson, Dragon Age didn’t meet the “evolving demand of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved [blockbuster storytelling] category.”

Canfield emphasized the competitive dynamics of the single-player RPG market, adding that Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s results highlight the importance of reallocating “resources toward our most significant and highest potential opportunities.”

Given that The Veilguard was initially designed as a live service game (before a series of production reboots), the executives’ comments led to speculation that Electronic Arts regrets the decision to ditch the online and social features and instead focus on single-player elements.

While this might be true, Wilson’s remarks seem more like an attempt to mask the true reasons for Dragon Age’s poor performance behind vague statements. Some players really want those “shared-world features,” but success cases of Baldur’s Gate 3 or the just-released Kingdom Come Deliverance II show that there is still a market for high-quality single-player RPGs.

So this explanation is just a way to shift the blame to other factors instead of acknowledging the wrong management decisions and all the mistakes that occurred during the game’s yearslong production (both on the part of Electronic Arts and the BioWare team itself). Not to mention that it is still unclear how much money EA spent to develop and bring The Veilguard to the market.

Last October, Wilson said The Veilguard had “breakout potential,” especially during limited competition in the RPG market. “We expect Dragon Age to be a great example of how our blockbuster storytelling engages and connects fans in truly unique ways,” he stated ahead of the game’s launch.

Now we see that EA had relatively modest expectations for Dragon Age. Reaching around 3 million players, including EA Play subscribers, didn’t seem like an impossible task, but the game still fell short of that goal by half. The reasons have to do with the overall quality of The Veilguard itself, not the lack of “shared-world features.”

So trying to retroactively blame the inability of Dragon Age to reach a wider audience on growing demand for online and social features is just a convenient way for EA executives to make excuses to shareholders — especially when the company’s business relies so heavily on live services.