EA’s Year of Austerity

Matt Dion
3 min readMay 16, 2024

What does the year ahead hold for Electronic Arts after a rocky FY24 full of layoffs, reorgs, game cancellations, and commercial flops?

Image Credit: Game Developer

After missing consensus estimates in its latest FY24 earnings release, Electronic Arts continued a string of foreboding headlines across the game industry by forecasting a weak quarter ahead. It appears that the next year will be a period of rebuilding and reinvestment.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, revenue came in at $7.56B, up a modest 2% year-over-year, with net bookings landing at $7.43B (+1% year-over-year). Of that $7.56B in revenue, roughly 73% of it ($5.54B) came from live services, with the remainder attributed to full game sales. Net income landed at $1.27B, with $2.9B of cash and cash equivalents and another $3.09B in current liabilities at the close of Q4.

For the year ahead (FY25), EA has forecast $7.1B to 7.5B in revenue, representing a potential 6% decline. The company chalked this up to a light slate of upcoming new releases and content updates, as well as “headwinds” from its mobile business “related to portfolio optimization decisions taken over the last six months.”

Q1 will almost certainly be difficult, too: The last fiscal year’s first quarter saw the release of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and tailwinds from the 2022 World Cup for EA’s Sports FC franchise, creating…

--

--

Matt Dion
Matt Dion

Written by Matt Dion

Always Scheming is the product of Matt Dion, a writer, entrepreneur, and games industry professional.