How well is MEA selling?

Yeah, that's my take. I figure there are a handful of genuinely principled people, and a handful more who are just paranoid. But both groups together aren't more than a rounding error.

What precisely qualifies a game as a major flop these days? 

If you don't like it. 

Agreed. ME:A is a lot of fun to play but plagued by a zillion problems. Even if they only sell 2-3million this entire year, there is still profit to be found.

"Disappointment" is proportional to "expectation". If EA believe the incompetent studio that is Bioware Montreal can deliver a blockbuster, then they must be disappointed now. If EA already knows that the B-Studio is not capable of a blockbuster, then they wont be disappointed much.

However, even if this is a financial failure, I doubt we will see any changes from EA. They will just invest in a new IP and let this IP dies. If Bioware's reputation is beyond salvageable, they will simply close it down or/and transfer the people to other studios under EA. Why take the extra difficult path of actually creating a solid, finished and polished product? How much more money and time must they invest and how much more profit can they expect by doing so? 

Burns that argument to the ground.

Nice catch.

Sad day, because this combined with that survey leads me to believe we may not see another Mass Effect.

At best we might get a new team to deal with or a major shake up.

BioWare won't go anywhere because Inquisition sold. But this should give them the kick in the pants they needed. It was sloppy work and there was no excuse for shipping the game as it was.

Heres hoping we get a new ME after this.

*Prays Ryncol*

Bioware Edmonton wont go anywhere true but Bioware Montreal....   

Rumors has it that Bioware Edmonton had to step in late in the development of ME:A and do a Harbinger otherwise there would be a zillion more bugs/glitches.

I hope we get ME:A 2 as well... hopefully the B-team wont be leading development this time.

I'm not up on the rumours, so I'll stay out of that one. Other than to say there's usually more to it than what we hear down here in the real world.

Not sure if there are sources on EA claiming it, but I've never cared personally. Regardless however, one would expect the next game in the franchise to sell better than the other cuz if you sell less then the franchise is in regression at that point. It then gets worse as that regression gets used in support for the franchise "dieing". I won't worry myself untill multiple games start having that issue, I'm not worrying right now.

Early this year, it was found out during an investor's call that EA predicted that Mass Effect: Andromeda will sell around three million copies around launch and a total of six million lifetime.  I guess that is what people are saying that is was a "disappointment" or "flop".

I must be remembering wrong, but I thought there was a recent interview with one of the people involved with Andromeda where it was stated the game was close to predictions, but since I cannot find the link I must be remembering wrong for that does seem out of place for EA. (Edit: They were talking about DLC being on track)

We will never know what EA knows about the sales figures of Mass Effect: Andromeda and that has been their stance on everything for years, they will give vague statements to their investors and not release any chest thumping stats to the press.  For they have other games such as FIFA that prints money and they don't brag about either.

EA has on their website that they Financial Q4 of 2016 and end of year 2016 financial statements are going to be presented after trading on May 9th and that is where you might find something to prove/disprove/twist for your arguments.

From what I have been seeing is that Andromeda does hold up pretty well for a lot of people, they just aren't blasting their love for the game everywhere, for looking at the polls for a place like this and it normally seems to be in favor of Andromeda being a good game that has fallen short of what it could be.  It is a very small sample size and not statistically accurate, but I remember polls on the old BSN being a lot more negative towards Mass Effect 3.

Natashina change thread title cause apparently OP doesn't understand what confirmed or worldwide means

One thing about the Steam versus Origin debate, like all publishers EA is all about money and that is a frequent argument of why people don't like the direction of the games. If they lost a lot of sales from leaving Steam they would have gone back because they owe it to their investors to make as much money as possible otherwise they are going to get sued. So even if there are die hards that refuse to move to Origin, I think the sales would be within the margin of error or fall within the potential losses of staying on Steam with the policy shift they had. So even if it is break even because they would have lost 30% of all PC DLC sales and that covers the loss of people not staying I think it will be staying close to what they were profiting before.