Labels president believes the game has ‘recovered’
Discussing the SimCity launch fiasco in a call with investors today, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau referred to the title as “a great game that has recovered from a challenging launch.” Although that sounds disingenuous when you look at the larger, ongoing picture, sadly, he’s not wrong from a financial standpoint. Sales were “ahead of forecast” at 1.6 million units sold; “nearly” half of these units were digital copies.
“The short explanation for the launch is that the initial rush of consumers overwhelmed our game service, disrupting the consumer experience,” he stated. “As we stabilized the game and improved service in the first week, fans continued to pour in.
“The key takeaway here: SimCity is a highly resilient, global franchise with a long service life in front of it,” Gibeau continued. “But we learned our lesson and are now building better processes to anticipate and service demand. This won’t happen again.”
