Electronic Arts and Marvel recently signed a big new deal covering three games, including an Iron Man title and two others. EA COO Laura Miele has discussed the agreement, saying that working on a licensed IP should help expand EA’s ambition to reach new players and grow its userbase.
Speaking during EA’s latest earnings briefing, Miele pointed out how its previous licensing deal with Disney for Star Wars proved to be very successful in bringing new players into the fold, and the same could be true with the Marvel deal. “Millions” of people came to EA to play its new Star Wars games, and more than 40% of these players went on to play other games inside the EA catalog, Miele said.
“So we consider adding licensed IP as a pretty significant engagement model to our overall community as we grow,” Miele said.
The executive went on to say, “We consider this licensed IP an incredibly important component of expanding, diversifying, and casting our net wider to bring new players in.”
For the Marvel deal specifically, Miele said EA is “thrilled” to be working alongside Marvel on its new game projects. Miele said EA feels confident it will develop “meaningful content” for its players in the world of Marvel games. The deal with Marvel goes beyond just a simple transactional relationship, Miele said, mentioning that EA and Marvel have a “creative partnership” and will develop the games together.
“We’ve seen great success in our past, and we expect no difference for the future with Marvel,” Miele said.
Marvel and Star Wars are just two of EA’s licensed properties. Another big one is The Lord of the Rings, which EA is now working on again with a mobile game called Heroes of Middle-earth.
EA’s deal with Marvel covers “at least” three new action-adventure games based on Marvel properties for console and PC. “Each of these games will be their own original stories set in the Marvel universe,” EA said. The first of these is a single-player, third-person Iron Man game from Motive Studios.
A big difference between EA’s owned franchises like Battlefield and The Sims and properties like Star Wars, Marvel, and The Lord of the Rings is that EA must pay a license fee for those games. As a result, these games likely need to perform especially well commercially to account for the fee.
EA’s Star Wars Battlefront series sold more than 33 million copies across its two recent installments, but EA has stopped making Battlefront games reportedly due in part to the licensing fee. As of 2021, EA’s Star Wars games sold 52 million copies and generated more than $3 billion in revenue.
One of EA’s most successful Star Wars games is the mobile title Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, which itself has made $1 billion from its microtransactions. Mobile is the most important platform for EA, and these gigantic numbers for Galaxy of Heroes speak to that.
EA’s next Star Wars game is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which is rumored to launch in March 2023.
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