Star Wars Battlefront 2 hasn’t been doing too hot in the UK and it has now been revealed that EA’s latest title had 60 percent fewer physical sales than its predecessor, Battlefront 1.
This situation is quite the turnaround considering that Battlefront 1 had the honor of being the biggest ever launch for a Star Wars title when it debuted in the UK in 2015.
And, of course, we know why this occurred: the microtransaction controversy.
What was poised to be an even greater launch than the first was marred by EA’s decision to tie multiplayer progression to in-game loot boxes. Not only were these boxes tied to progression, but one would have to spend either an inordinate amount of time to unlock them or pay a hefty amount of dough to fast-track the process. News of this quickly spread and many fans vowed not to pick the game up at all — even if they had planned to originally. In fact, things were so bad for EA that outlets like CNBC and Washington Post took notice.
Following this backlash, EA opted to suspend microtransactions and leave the current loot box system intact (before the game even launched), but it did little to remedy the situation it was in.
That said, its hard to say for sure just how much the microtransaction controversy hurt Battlefront 2’s physical sales in the UK, especially as an increasing amount of consumers go digital, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that microtransactions and the resulting fallout was the cause for most of that decline.
In any case, this situation only applies to the UK, but chances are Battlefront 2 suffered a similar fate in other regions as well.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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