EA just hosted its quarterly financial conference call for investors and analysts, and its executives have been asked to comment about the recent price hikes of games.
In response to a direct question from an analyst during the livestreamed conference call, Chief Financial Officer Stuart Canfield mentioned that there are no changes to the current pricing strategy, albeit he did add “at this point.”
The question directly called out the increases in prices by EA’s “peers” as an example, obviously pointing at the introduction of $80 games by Nintendo and Microsoft
“From a guidance perspective that we put out, we have reflected no changes in the current strategy, at this point.”
EA provided its forecast (guidance) for the full current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2026, so the company likely doesn’t expect significant changes in pricing at least until then.
CEO Andrew Wilson provided a more long-winded (but also vaguer) response, but implied that EA is focusing on combining quality and value with its games.
In terms of pricing power, our business is very different today than it was even just 10 years ago. In a world where everything we did 10 years ago was about selling shiny discs in plastic boxes on retail shelves, that’s still a part of our business, but it’s a significantly smaller part of our business.
And we now have pricing represented, everything from free-to-play all the way to deluxe editions and beyond. At the end of the day, whether we’re doing something that costs a dollar or we’re doing something that costs ten dollars or we’re doing something that costs a hundred dollars, our objective is always to deliver incredible quality and exponential value for our player base.
And what we’ve discovered over the course of time is that whenever we can marry quality and value together, our business is strong, resilient, and continues to grow.
While this is no promise that EA’s price will never change, it’s interesting to see Wilson shift the discourse from pure pricing to quality and value.
The company’s guidance for the current fiscal year mentioned by Canfield predicted fairly substantial net bookings growth year-on-year thanks to EA Sports, The Sims, and the releases of the new Battlefield and Skate games.
If you’d like to read more about Electronic Arts’ financial performance, you can check out our dedicated article about the financial results announced yesterday.
Other gaming companies have also already announced their financial results this quarter, including Koei Tecmo and Microsoft. You can expect more reports on this topic over the coming couple of weeks.