Here’s a stat line that will make you probably feel slightly aged like a fine wine or a banana ripe for being made into bread: Anthem will be five years old next month. We’re bringing this back up to mind primarily because an eagle-eyed Twitter user pointed out a now-edited LinkedIn post that cast a little light on the looter shooter’s early days and the sales expectations of Electronic Arts.
According to a post by former global marketing senior manager Alexandre Scriabine, where he outlined his experience in marketing and social media, Anthem sold 2M units in its launch week and hit a lifetime sales figure of 5M units. That sounds like a lot, but putting those figures in perspective, EA wanted to see between 5M and 6M units by the end of March 2019. Incidentally, Scriabine edited his post to remove the sales figures, but the internet never forgets.
If nothing else, this puts into stark relief the lofty expectations of Anthem, which likely helped developer BioWare as it continued to slide away from multiplayer and MMORPG titles, thanks in no small part to some studio brain drain. It all ended with a whimper as the previous plans for a reboot died on the vine, leaving us to recall a game that was flawed but fun and remember the sting of its untimely yet not really unexpected end.
Happy birthday.
