GTA V’s Success Affected EA’s Bottom Line, “Sucked Dollars” From the Market

It’s no secret that Grand Theft Auto V sold remarkably well last Fall, and the trend hasn’t exactly tailed off. The open-world juggernaut has to date shipped 32.5 million copies, and if the game ever retails for less than the typical full price, there are sure to be spikes in sales down the line.

What may not have been as obvious is that, according to EA’s CFO Blake Jorgenson, GTA V significantly damaged the sales potential of other publisher’s games, altering buying behavior across the entire industry.

I don’t think anyone anticipated the level of that success. Fabulous, fabulous product and [it] did extremely well. It did, I think, suck dollars out of the old-generation software market.

Jorgenson’s comments were made at the recent Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, and it’s not just the numbers GTA V shifted that threw competitors off either — it was the timing.

We expect that market to be challenged just because of the transitions to the new generation and I think it was extra-challenged based on that release. As reminder, [Rockstar Games] moved that release from the spring to the fall, so it even changed our expectations again as it got moved.

While it’s true nobody could have predicted Rockstar’s unprecedented success, it is a bit disheartening that the mere idea of a non-yearly franchise swooping in with fantastic results comes as a shock to big-publisher executives. Is it any surprise when a new Zelda game arrives to critical acclaim?

Gamers love their yearly Call of Duty, sure, but when the best franchises in history gear up for their latest release after half a decade, it doesn’t seem all that hard to predict what gamers will choose. To EA’s credit, it’s not the worst of franchise-milkers —  at least Battlefield is bi-yearly.