The last numbered part of Battlefield in the United States was not included in the top ten best-selling games of the year. Before that, over the past ten years, only Battlefield: Hardline and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 were not included in the top.
Battlefield V
Apart from them, every time a new Battlefield series (including Battlefront) was released, it necessarily got into the top sales for the year formed by NPD Group:
- 2011: Battlefield 3 took 4th place;
- 2013: Battlefield 4 took 4th place;
- 2015: Star Wars: Battlefront took 4th place;
- 2016: Battlefield 1 took 2nd place;
- 2017: Star Wars: Battlefront II took 8th place.
In 2018, the numbered shooter about the Second World War from EA and DICE took only the fourteenth place in sales. He was beaten by Grand Theft Auto V (11), Mario Kart 8 (12) and FIFA 19 (13).
The VentureBeat publication, which was the first to draw attention to the situation, notes that the fall in the game’s position relative to the previous games in the series can be explained by the fact that NPD does not take into account the sales of the game in Origins, plus Battlefield V was the first game in the series that is distributed by subscription Origin Access Premier.
However, it seems to us that it is worth considering a number of other factors that could negatively affect sales. Among them:
- unsuccessful advertising campaign (if the emphasis was placed on realism when promoting Battlefield 1, then the first Battlefield V commercials smacked of an alternative story, which greatly disappointed the CA of the project);
- unsuccessful implementation of the distribution service model (there was very little content in the game at the release, there were not enough basic game modes that were in the previous games of the series from the start of sales);
- in particular, there was no “battle royale” mode, the presence of which is now perceived as a standard in shooters.