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A banner fall has quickly turned into a brutal winter for prominent video game developer Electronic Arts.
The longtime maker of games such as Madden NFL just weeks ago was basking in the glow of the runaway success of its resurrected franchise, College Football 25, which quickly became the best-selling sports video game in U.S. history. Success in the hypercritical world of video games, however, can often be fleeting and a more recent, downbeat report from EA has sent the company’s shares tumbling.
The company said in a preliminary quarterly earnings report this week that it is changing initial guidance for its fiscal year 2025 from mid-single-digit percentage growth in live service net bookings—a key element of how EA measures its corporate performance—to a similarly sized decline. Underperformance in EA Sports FC, its soccer game franchise that is a key pillar for the entire EA business globally, was cited as a key factor for the switch.
That disclosure led to a nearly 17% fall in EA stock Thursday, the company’s worst one-day performance since 2008. Friday’s trading brought more downward pressure, with another dip of 1.7% to $116.56 per share.
The downgraded corporate forecast “suggests to us that the company was caught off guard by the shortfall and isn’t certain about how to address it,” Wedbush analysts said in a research note.
The company’s full third-quarter earnings report is scheduled for Feb. 4.
EA Sports FC 25, the second installment of a soccer game fundamentally remade without FIFA licensing, had initially received decent reviews upon release last September. Performance issues, however, surfaced later, and EA released last week a game refresh that it called “the most significant mid-season gameplay overhaul we’ve ever made, based on your feedback.”
