Dragon Age: The Veilguard pulled in 1.5 million players but still missed EA sales expectations by nearly half

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A preliminary earnings report from EA indicates Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed by 50%.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard companions emmerich
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the first new game in the franchise after 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Publisher Electronic Arts (EA) and developer BioWare's latest role-playing game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, grabbed around 1.5 million players, but missed EA's expectations by almost 50%. That comes via a preliminary earnings report from EA, sharing details on its performance for the third fiscal quarter.

We're still a few days out from EA's full financial results for the quarter, which will be shared on Feb. 4, 2025. EA expects a "mid-single-digit decline," and in addition to Dragon Age, the company blamed EA Sports FC 25 for underperforming.

"During Q3, we continued to deliver high-quality games and experiences across our portfolio; however, Dragon Age and EA SPORTS FC 25 underperformed our net bookings expectations,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson. “This month, our teams delivered a comprehensive gameplay refresh in addition to our annual Team of the Year update in FC 25; positive player feedback and early results are encouraging. We remain confident in our long-term strategy and expect a return to growth in FY26, as we execute against our pipeline.”

Launching in October 2024, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the long-awaited fourth entry in the Dragon Age franchise, coming a decade after 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition. As Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn't included in any game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass on consoles, though it is included in EA Play Pro on PC.

Single-player games face an uphill battle

Dragon Age: The Veilguard key art

The fourth Dragon Age game was rebooted multiple times before BioWare landed on The Veilguard. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

This news is certainly disappointing for Dragon Age fans, especially since the wait for The Veilguard was so long. The fourth entry in the fantasy series was rebooted multiple times across the years, with different directors joining and leaving the project at BioWare. At one point, the game was even engineered as a live service title before being again rebooted into a single-player adventure.

As more and more of players' time is sucked up by a handful of live service games, it's harder and harder for new games to break out as huge successes. In 2023, the only single-player game to crack the top ten most-played games was Starfield. I've previously written about the threat of "black hole" titles when discussing gaming trends in 2024, and it's a problem that doesn't have an easy solution.

I recently replayed every Dragon Age game while writing a recap of the story so far, and having that comparison in mind was interesting heading into The Veilguard. In my review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I wrote that "The combat is wildly different and the tone varies, but the characters here are the same vital, meaningful core that BioWare is known to deliver. While far removed in many ways from the fantasy franchise I grew up loving, Dragon Age: The Veilguard takes its place by prior adventures in Thedas with pride."

Looking ahead, BioWare is now working on a fifth Mass Effect game, which is being built by a team using Unreal Engine 5. This game is still fairly early in development, and is not expected to release in the next couple of years. Elsewhere at EA, multiple studios are working on the next Battlefield game.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is currently available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.

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Samuel Tolbert
Samuel Tolbert
Freelance Writer

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter @SamuelTolbert.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • omnigamer
    Thats because we have yett to buy it, some times we cant afford things we so badly want, but have to prioritize, il be making my purchase next week, see how sales go from then on
    Reply
  • fjtorres5591
    omnigamer said:
    Thats because we have yett to buy it, some times we cant afford things we so badly want, but have to prioritize, il be making my purchase next week, see how sales go from then on
    You may want to consider that VEILGUARD is not, like earlier games in the franchise, an actual RPG with significant gamer choice and meaningful consequences, but more of a single-narrative action game like the typical Sony exclusive than earlier DRAGON AGE games (INQUISITION, ORIGINS), or the MASS EFFECT games. The game appears to have prioritized the action and combat challenge over player choice. The low sales numbers were earned by steering away from the elements that had previously defined the franchise so it isn't a slow seller but rather a low seller for turning away from the franchise's natural audience.

    Most of the RPG-focused reviewers have been very negative on the game for removing gamer agency in the progression of the game narrative and the developers of the next MASS EFFECT game within EA have publicly distanced themselves from VEILGUARD and its approach. The game's creative director has already quit and there is reporting that the entire studio is to be closed next month.

    A rumor but in line with the state of the industry.

    Approach the game with caution.

    If financially concerned, you might want to wait a bit as the game is headed for the heavy discount tier, if its not already there, and, even more affordable, EA PLAY. it is also a short game so EA PLAY will reduce your cost to one month's due. At which point if you actually like it you can pick it up at a deeper discount soon enough.
    Reply
  • Puddle
    I mean if you go in YouTube and watch the reviews there is a pretty consistent sentiment from many players that the Veilguard is not a good game. The dialogue writing comes across as stilted, preachy, unlikeable, and often just nonsensical, with many of the character interactions being plagued with poor direction, lack luster voice acting, and odd pacing.

    Couple this with the absence of meaningful choices for players to make that impact not only the character development but also the story, strange retcons that don't really improve things or provide any justification for the changes, and you've got enough problems to sink the ship.

    Add on top of all of that the massive changes to the way the game actually plays, changes which are mostly simplifications that remove depth and strategy (actually tactical, but most confuse those words) from the combat, and being now the third bad game in a row from a formerly respected studio, published by a company that has very little goodwill or trust from gamers at large and it's not hard to understand why they missed sales targets by 50%. This article continued of to gas up a bad offering as good, I'm sure will contribute to EA continuing to fail to learn anything useful from this failure.
    Reply