Anthem, the upcoming online multiplayer from BioWare and EA has some pretty big goals to hit, as it’s been announced it’s hoping to hit six million sales in six days [via GamesIndustry].
Anthem, which recently opened up a weekend of demo play for its fans, isn’t out until the end of this month, but how likely is it to hit its lofty targets?
According to EA CFO Blake Jorgensen, it’s almost a dead-cert at this point, as he told the company’s investors they’ve planned for anywhere between five and six million sales by March 31st 2019 – the end of the fiscal year.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson also told investors that “people…[are now] realizing it is a game that’s unlike any other game they’ve ever played.”
He then added: “we think there is a great opportunity not just this year for [Anthem], but that should sell well for a long period of time as we add more content through the live service plan.”
The game hasn’t had the easiest start, with EA having to release a statement on the demo’s “rocky start.” Players experienced serious problems with overloaded servers, with many people believing BioWare was unprepared for the number of players taking part.
Chad Robertson, Anthem’s Head of Live service released a statement on the matter, which you can read in full here.
Robertson said: “[The demo launch] was rocky. The first day of our VIP demo weekend did not go exactly as we planned, and I want to share what happened…
“While there are a number of issues we dealt with yesterday, the three primary areas were:
“Platform connections – this was caused by the spike in players entering the game when we opened up. Unfortunately, these issues did not present themselves during our internal testing. Investigations are ongoing, and we will continue to apply fixes throughout the weekend.
“Entitlements – these are account flags that grant players things like their pre-order incentives and demo access. During the demo weekend, we identified a bug where VIP players with a specific combination of entitlements were being blocked from accessing the demo. We believe we’ve resolved most of these, but have additional cases we are addressing.
“Infinite loads” – this is occurring for some players, particularly when they transition from Fort Tarsis to an expedition. We saw this only in isolated cases during internal testing and believed it was resolved. Unfortunately, the problem is exacerbated in the real-world where differences with player’s ISPs and home networks introduce new behavior.”
As for solutions, BioWare says it is committed to resolving login and entitlement issues, implementing “infinite load” fixes and improvements to server performance.
Anthem launches on February 22, 2019. Will you be playing?
Featured Image Credit: BioWare/EA