Electronic Arts has released Q4 FY20 financials, stating that The Sims 4 had the biggest year since its launch in 2014, and that The Sims 4 helped drive up digital net bookings.
The Sims 4 inspires an entirely different gaming audience, and one that continues to grow. It provides a completely unique experience from anything else on the market, and FY20 was its biggest year since launch. In every quarter this year, monthly average players in The Sims 4 were higher than the previous year. Our Sims community is diverse and highly creative, and our success continues to be built on delivering a wide variety of content and ways to engage for players with very different interests.
With our teams’ expertise in live services, we’re also building some of the biggest ongoing
experiences in the industry. We have a lot more for the growing Apex Legends community this year, starting next week with Season 5. Maxis will continue delivering Sims 4 content that empowers self-expression and fuels the creativity of our diverse player audience. In addition to our new EA SPORTS games, we will continue delivering fans’ daily connection to sports through our live services, even if the real-world leagues and teams aren’t back in action yet. And we are also working to bring more content in FIFA Online and Apex Legends in Asia that will excite our current players and welcome new ones.First and foremost, we are concerned for the safety and well-being of our people. Andrew has given you a brief introduction to the measures we have taken and continue to take. Teams across the company have shown extraordinary innovation in meeting the challenge of delivering games from home. Developing a game from home inevitably carries risks, and we haven’t yet solved all the problems, but, for example: we just had a very successful FIFA Ultimate Team birthday event; Apex Legends Season 5 is about to launch; and we expect the next Sims expansion and Command & Conquer Remastered to both launch in June as scheduled. Learnings from this period will forever change the way we work at EA.
Digital net bookings were $1.12 billion, with the beat versus expectations driven by The Sims 4 and Apex Legends. Digital net bookings represented 78% of our business on a trailing twelve-month basis, a new record. This compares to 75% in the prior year.
