While the first half of 2019 is already filled with highly anticipated releases, BioWare's Anthem ranks high even among those. The first shared world online action RPG by BioWare is due to release in late February after years of hype.
During yesterday's Q2 2019 earnings call, publisher Electronic Arts expressed strong confidence in the game now that it's only a few months away from its debut. In his opening statement, CEO Andrew Wilson stated:
On February 22nd, BioWare will launch their stunning and ambitious shared-world game, Anthem. The team has done an outstanding job executing against their vision for a game with amazing levels of complexity, scale, and innovation.
Anthem has won more than ninety awards, including recognition as one of the most anticipated games of the year, and player feedback continues to be highly positive through our pre-launch testing. We can't wait to see this game come alive for fans at launch and through the long-term live services to come.
CFO and COO Blake Jorgensen later provided more details, citing very positive feedback both internally and externally and mentioning that the game's forecast has been revised upward as a result. Jorgensen also said that we'll see a lot more from Anthem once this year's crowded Holiday season is over.
We're also very excited about Anthem. Andrew mentioned it was getting a lot of positive feedback. We think it's a fabulous game, and you'll see a lot more of it to come after we get out of this holiday window into early next year. And I think our original expectations of the game were probably too low, and thus we think that's important.
Let me start with Anthem and I'll let Andrew address the mobile piece. Anthem, it's a brand new IP. And so when we originally forecasted it, we forecasted it at a pretty low level, as we thought about without a lot of information. That was last May or April when we put that forecast together.
As we've gotten deeper into the final parts of the game and we had it tested with a lot of people, clearly the excitement is building. It started building at E3 as people learned what the game was and saw it. And so typically, when you're forecasting a brand-new IP, you usually start lower and then build that forecast over time, and that's essentially what we've done.
We're getting excitement both internally and externally about the game. As Andrew mentioned, it's very different than anything BioWare has built in the past. It looks stunning and it plays extremely well. And that's what's given us more confidence around the forecast.
As a reminder, a demo will be available to customers who have pre-ordered the game on February 1st.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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