Remember earlier when EA said that multiplayer was an integral part of game sales? Well, I’m guessing part of that reasoning comes from the fact that Battlefield 1943, their little $15 downloadable title that had three maps to play on, has netted around $16 million in profit.
Battlefield 1943 was what EA called an “experiment” to see how well a download-only game would fare against tough retail competition. It succeeded admirably, according to CFO Eric Brown who said that the game, which cost “in the single-digit millions” to make, netted $16 million after Sony and Microsoft took their respective cuts.
In the near future, EA is set to release its Vietnam expansion for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which is a similar principle of multiplayer-only downloadable maps, but in this case you need a full copy of the retail game to play it. Judging from 1943′s astounding sales, Vietnam might be a cash cow (which is a sentence I thought I’d never say).
