As Respawn’s battle royale Apex Legends nears its sixth birthday, EA has said it’s failing to do the business for the company, and outlined plans for what it called Apex Legends 2.0.
Speaking in a financial call on its third quarter results, EA said that Apex Legends net bookings (revenue) were down year-over-year, but performed in-line with the company’s expectations.
During a question and answers session with analysts, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked for an update on the performance of Apex Legends, and his response was clear: Apex Legends is a huge game with millions of players, but it’s simply not making enough money for EA.
“Apex is probably one of the great new launches in our industry over the last decade and has been loved by that core cohort and we’ve had over 200 million people play the game,” Wilson began. “However, the trajectory of the business of that franchise has not been headed in the direction that we have wanted for some time. We have been trying, tuning, and testing many things in the context of the ongoing support of the community.
“As we think about Apex today, I really think about the development happening across three core vectors. The first is how do we continue to support this incredible community that plays the game day-in and day-out, which numbers tens of millions of people, and that’s both quality-of-life, anti-cheat, and all of the things that make the core experience great as well as the creation of new content for that community.
“And we continue to try and test and develop more and great content for that community. And I would say we have seen some progress in that, but probably not as much as we would have liked.”
So, what’s EA going to do to turn Apex Legends around in financial terms? Wilson said it’s working on a major update to the game, what he called Apex Legends 2.0, that sounds designed to reinvigorate the franchise, bring more people into the game, and, yes, make more money.
However, Wilson said he doesn’t want to release Apex Legends 2.0 on top of the next Battlefield, which is due out before April 2026. It’ll come out after that, so, probably, at some point during EA’s 2027 fiscal year ending March 2027.
“We do believe there will be a time where we need to do a more meaningful update of Apex as a broad game experience, and the team is diligently working on that,” Wilson said. “You should imagine we probably wouldn’t drop that on top of a Battlefield launch. And so from a timing standpoint, our thinking right now is that that would exist post-Battlefield.
“And then on a longer-term time horizon, again, these franchises that exist at this level and have this much fan love don’t come along all that often. What I think we’ve demonstrated as a company is an ability to build franchises that last 10, 20, 30 years and growing.
“Our expectation is that Apex will also be one of those franchises and that sometime on a longer-term time horizon, there will be an even bigger, more meaningful update to that broader game experience, an Apex 2.0, if you will. This will not be the final incarnation of Apex.
“So the team remains incredibly committed. We continue to invest behind the core community who continues to play, that numbers in the tens of millions of players. We do believe that there should be a more major update that will probably happen after a Battlefield launch just in terms of timing, and the team is diligently working through what that would be.
“And then longer-term, our expectation is that we’ll continue to expand what this franchise is and how we support a core community of highly competitive players and new communities that want to come and experience all the greatness that Apex has to offer.”
Apex Legends 2.0 sounds a bit like what Activision tried with Call of Duty battle royale Warzone, which rebooted somewhat with a 2.0 version in 2022. The jury is still out on whether that was the right move, with fans of the free-to-play shooter often reminiscing about Warzone as it was in the first two years of its life. The situation with Apex Legends is different, of course, but EA will be mindful of how its competitors in the battle royale market have fared as they work to grow its player base.
Speaking of which, Apex Legends remains one of the top-played games on Steam via concurrent player count (Microsoft and Sony do not make player numbers public). However, it is well past its peak on Valve’s platform, and is on a trajectory to hit record lows.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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