Analysts were already talking about the poor sales of Medal of Honor: Warfighter, the negative feedback and the generally poor reception the game received both publicly and critically. Well, following EA's conference call yesterday, it was noted by Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter that due to all the disappointment surrounding the Medal of Honor brand, it could be dead in the water.
GameIndustry.biz gives a rundown of Pachter's hypothesis for the first-person shooter series following the news that not only has the game performed poorly with critics (with an average Metacritic of 53% across all three platforms) but with sales not looking too good either, EA may just leave the Medal of Honor brand to die in the backwoods somewhere.
Pachter states...
“Perhaps more importantly, the poor performance of Medal of Honor makes it highly unlikely that EA can deliver significant digital revenues from DLC subscriptions next year, and sets the company up for a disappointing comparison to the $204 million in digital revenues it expects from Battlefield this year,""These missteps should not be taken lightly. A few years ago, EA management set forth a strategy to displace Activision as king of the first-person shooter heap, and said it intended the duo of Medal of Honor and Battlefield to alternate releases and slowly take share from Activision,"
EA's plan was to usurp about 60% of the market share value from Activision over the course of the next few years using Battlefield and Medal of Honor as alternating direct competitors to the titan that is Call of Duty.
However, despite Battlefield 3 pulling its weight the problem lies with Medal of Honor who couldn't seem to distinguish itself enough from the competition to be...well, competition.
Pachter concluded his analytical surmise of the situation saying...
"Warfighter's review scores may have destroyed chances for sequels in the all-important first-person shooter segment of the market...We think that low review scores will impair EA's (and the Medal of Honor brand's) reputation with those who pre-ordered the game or bought it as soon as it was released (likely some of EA's most dedicated customers), and believe EA alienated at least a small portion of these gamers.""Given the impairment to the Medal of Honor brand, we think EA is unlikely to take Activision's mantle as the leading developer of first-person shooters for several years."
It was kind of obvious EA wasn't going to trump Call of Duty with a wannabe game like Warfighter. It looked as generic as reviewers said it was, and now the sales match up to the perception that another generic military shooter has failed to dethrone the reigning champ. Oh well, maybe next year EA...maybe next year.
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