EA Q1 2018 Results (MEA 'significant contributor')

So it's like 3 million copies for ME2( counting PS3 year later) and 3.5 million for ME3. ME:A sales might be in between those numbers for first week, is what I meant. Which is again, above EA's 3 million copies sold expectation.

Although I still think it's much higher then that, but I hope I made it more clear now.

Well, overestimating guidance isn't misleading investors. Most earnings calls have a disclaimer to that affect regarding forward looking statements.

But if Andromeda sales were really bad they would have to mention something like "sales were up, but partly offset by lower than expected Mass Effect Andromeda sales."

Some analysis of the financials I saw suggested MEA sales could have been around 3 million or slightly higher in the first few weeks, so that fits.

It's good, but probably nothing EA would get overly excited about given the critical reception and potential damage to the brand reputation.

ME trilogy never had exciting sales numbers for EA, really. Those were exciting sales numbers for BioWare at the time, but now it's expected sales figure for them too.

Also do consider that ME:A had very modest marketing, while ME2 and ME3 had pretty aggressive marketing campaign. ME:A selling as much as those two titles, yet with far less marketing, is still good news.
Which does mean that for next ME game, they need to go aggressive with marketing and convince people they did better job with a sequel. As well that's easier to be done with making quality SP Story DLC's for ME:A, although we have to still wait for any official word on that development.

I do remember there was some data mining on ME:A done about some 3 acts DLC.
So if they do an expansion, is it like some episodic kind?

Well, there's a limit to how much bad things EA would actually say about a game even if it didn't perform well. They will always try to put a positive spin on things.

If sales were truly terrible though, they would have to acknowledge it to some degree, so there is that.

This thread is highly disrupted.
People are trying to have a discussion.

Removed:

• Grandstanding
• Bait
• Passive aggression
  
• Bickering

It was released in Q1 and should be a significant contributor.

It was released at the end of Q4

I am personally confused with the numbers being thrown around.

Everything I have seen it simply says "expected five million copies sold" we have no timeline to compare that to.  The other comment from EA before was "three million in the first week and six million lifetime".  The problem is we don't have access to the entire set of comments to made, so just assuming that he expected five million copies in the first week just seems to be speculation and just as accurate as five million lifetime and he predicts the game will sell a million copies less then the EA financial report a month or two prior.

As far as I've been able to gather, we have at least two sources for the different numbers being thrown around. Let's start with the 3m and 6m figures.

On January 31st, 2017, EA had their Q3 FY17 Earnings Call. In the Q&A section of the transcript (page 15), analyst Andrew Crum, from Stifel Nicolaus, asks the following:

To which, Blake Jorgensen, EA's CFO, replied the following:

With Andromeda releasing March 21st on NA (March 23rd on Europe), and EA's Q4 FY17 ending on March 31st, Crum wanted to know how much of that revenue would be pushed to Q1 FY18. After all, Andromeda would've been in Q4 FY17 for only 10 days, about a week. Jorgensen estimated 30 to 50% of the game's lifetime sales in Q4 FY17 and used Mass Effect 3's 6 million lifetime sales to provide a baseline number (3 million).

The 5m figure comes from a different source. On March 1st, 2017, the Edmonton Journal published an article stating that Aaryn Flynn, then General Manager of BioWare, expected the game to sell "at least 5m copies at an $80 retail price." Now, unlike with Jorgensen's response, we have no timeline for this 5m number. Was he referring to first-week sales? Lifetime sales? I'm inclined to believe it's the latter since it's closer to Mass Effect 3's lifetime sales.

If anyone else has other sources, feel free to contribute.

If it's a big hit than we ought to see a bunch of DLC...