Parallels between Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda

He kidnapped Zipzap2000?! That seems a little much over a video game. Although it does explain why Zip disappeared. 

Again, I'll say take it for what you will.  All I'm getting out of it is that there is no way to accurately obtain sales data on video games.  Even the methodology page at VG Chartz calls their data "estimates" and explains that they use tactics such as just "passively polling" gamers to find out what games they are playing and polling their "retail partners"  and then extrapolating that data into their charts.  I admit I'm not scouring their site, but I couldn't even spot a list of their retail partners to judge, for instance, whether or not Xbox Live is sending them data. Also, the most recent weekly chartz on the site is for June 10th... that means no data yet correlating to Bioware's opening up the free trial on all platforms... and most of that probably results in a digital sale, even on the consoles since very few people would bother to run out and buy a disk and reload everything from the disk if all that's needed is to  unlocked the rest of the game after their free trial.

www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php

They completely ignored ME:A in their earnings call UNTIL someone asked them about it. Doesn't that seem strange considering it was their only AAA game released during the quarter?

Dead Space 3 had DLC

I think by now you've done enough research for a doctorate in this shit.

I think one big difference is one got shutdown while the other hasn't.

It's a wait and see approach. I doubt bioware is failing like the dead space devs were (DS3 wasn't even where it's issues started). EA could Legitimately be happy with bioware or they could just be putting on a face, they've done it before after all and let's say bioware were to get shutdown, it wouldn't be the first time EA has done it to a developer. Like I said though, it's a wait and see approach.

I will say it's hard to see them shutting down when personnel is changing (big one being Hudson taking over the entirety of bioware). Why shutdown and make all those changes pointless?

Clearly "many more" people don't - here is EA's take:

"The consumer is shifting faster than we know or we expected,” CFO Blake Jorgensen admitted during an earnings call overnight, where he revealed that 33 per cent of his organisation’s sales from the fiscal year that’s just finished came via full game downloads.
www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/05/ea_expects_digital_to_account_for_almost_half_of_game_sales_soon

It's clearly a growing number, but not a majority, yet.