Titanfall 2‘s release date, October 28, is sandwiched between two other high-profile shooters, Battlefield 1 (October 21) and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (November 4). EA management said in the past that it wasn’t worried about putting Titanfall 2 out so close to those other shooters, and that’s a line that producer Drew McCoy echoed in a new interview with PlayStation Lifestyle.
A good game gets noticed, McCoy said.
“I actually don’t know where the decision came from,” he said about Titanfall 2’s release date. “I just know it was locked in a long time ago and there was no changing it. I’m not really worried about it.
“We tried not to [worry] really…When you care about what other games are doing, when they’re releasing [, you worry]. At the end of the day, we’re releasing a game that we’re happy with, and we enjoy playing, that we’re proud of. As long as we’re doing that, I think we’re gonna find an audience. It doesn’t really matter when it comes out. A good game gets noticed.”
PlayStation Lifestyle’s interview was published on October 27. On October 28, research firm Cowen & Company put out a report that said Titanfall 2 sales would be “substantially disappointing,” downgrading the game’s sales expectations from 9 million units to 5 million to 6 million units.
Titanfall 2’s quality is not the problem, Cowen & Company noted (indeed, the game is getting strong reviews), but the timing is tough.
“We think the game got squeezed between Battlefield 1 and [Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare],” it said. “We suspect EA believed that by launching two shooters next to Call of Duty it could put a large dent in its biggest competitor, but instead EA appears to have wound up shooting its own foot off.”
EA CEO Andrew Wilson previously said that Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 cater to different types of shooter players, giving EA broad coverage of the genre.
“[Shooters are] a giant category in our industry, $4.5 billion, there’s a very broad and diverse set of players who are looking to fulfill different gameplay motivations,” he said in May. “Some people play very quick play, some people play more strategic, some people want both in different context.”
By comparison, the original Titanfall reached around 11 million unique players, Respawn told PlayStation Lifestyle in September, though this is not a sales number.
EA will report earnings for its latest financial period this coming Tuesday, November 1. The company may share more details on the performance of Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 at that time. We will have a full breakdown of EA’s earnings report next week when it’s announced.
For more on Titanfall 2, check out GameSpot’s review and what other critics are saying.