Apex Legends approaches 70 million players, becomes EA’s bread and butter shooter

And the loot box strategy is the butter scraped over too much bread

I’ve low key been playing Apex Legends since launch. And I say low key meaningfully, as I don’t know many people personally who have kept up with it since its explosive launch (it went from number one on Twitch earlier this year to scrapping for the top 20 eventually), but in this case EA is here to provide cold hard numbers.

According to their latest financial report, EA reiterates (as they did a few months back) that Apex Legends is a “major long-term franchise” for the company, asserting that it has now reached a community peak of “past 70 million players.” How many of those are concurrent? We’ve reached out to EA for that information, but for now, that’s what we have alongside of this vague statement: “Weekly average player peaks in Season Three [Ed: which started in early October] are significantly above our Season Two [Ed: which started on July 2] peaks, and we’re continuing to bring more new players into the game”

They’re not just resting on their PC and console laurels either, as EA once again shared their long term strategy: “We’re expanding our Apex Legends team to deliver our content plans for FY21, and we will reach new audiences through mobile and across Asia.” Apex Legends has become a cash cow live service situation for EA, as it continues to ignore the post-launch collapse of Anthem and the (what it deems) underwhelming impact of Battlefield V.

In fact, we’re not even getting a new Battlefield game in 2020: that’s how bad things are for that franchise. Out with the old, in with the new! “At least” Call of Duty will survive until we die.

Prepared Remarks [EA]