Now we know the sales figures and understand why the MMO had to die

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In 2019, Electronic Arts released the computer game Anthem, an MMO where everyone was Iron Man. Despite a relatively strong start, problems quickly became apparent in the game and ultimately development of the game was frozen while EA planned a reboot. But nothing came of the reboot and Anthem died in February 2021. Now we know the reason for this, the sales figures have been revealed.

What is the new information at Anthem?

  • A former marketing manager at EA; Alexandre Scriabine, has published his successes at EA on LinkedIn and also listed Anthem’s sales figures here. A Twitter user posted a picture of these numbers.
  • Anthem sold 2 million units in its first week and 5 million units for its entire duration.
  • This makes it the clear bottom among the games listed by the EA manager: games like Battlefront (50 million units) or Battlefield 1 (21 million units in year 1) perform much better.

    • Anthem shows the four different battle suits in the launch trailer

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    Sales figures apparently collapsed after just one week

    Why are the sales figures so sobering? As can be seen from media reports (via gamespot), EA had relatively modest goals for Anthem, but Anthem ultimately fell short of them.

    As the then EA boss said in May 2019, Anthem’s sales figures at launch did not meet EA’s expectations:

  • They wanted to sell 5-6 million units in the first month after the release.
  • In fact, as we now know, the title only sold 5 million units over its lifetime.

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    The negative vibe after the launch was probably Anthem’s undoing

    What was the problem? As the numbers suggest, Anthem sold quite well during its first week of release, but it lacked longevity.

    As the many problems became apparent and Anthem’s reputation suffered, Anthem’s sales must have plummeted and never recovered to reasonable levels.

    When you see that EA sells 21 million units with other titles like Battlefield 1 or that Apex Legends had 50 million registered games within 28 days, EA has probably made the hard decision not to take more time Investing money in Anthem.

    Ultimately a major setback for MMO players. Anthem’s poor performance in 2019 contributed to the current MMO crisis that we have been experiencing for the past 5 years.

    At the end of Anthem:

    EA officially stops work on Anthem and the rework

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