I hate earnings calls. I do not exist in the centre of the Venn diagram between people who like shotgunning digital soldiers in the face and people who enjoy the phrase "during Q3, we repurchased 2.5 million shares at a cost of $97 million". And so, while my natural tendency is to ignore EA's fiscal 2015 'Q3' earnings call, a bit of news made it worth diving inside.
You can see a transcript of the call here, should you want to know EA's non-GAAP diluted EPS for the quarter. The bit relevant to my interests can be found in the section concerning Dragon Age: Inquisition, where it's revealed to be Bioware's most successful launch in history.
Take it away, EA's Andrew Wilson:
"[Dragon Age: Inquisition] quickly became the most successful launch in BioWare history. More than 113 million hours have already been spent exploring the depth and detail of the single-player experience in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and more players are joining each day."
Not bad going for the Bioware series that isn't about a cool space team shooting their way through the galaxy and chatting to each other about gun recalibration.
Unsurprisingly, you can expect future DLC for both Inquisition and some of EA's other big titles. "Players in our current experiences," Wilson said, "including Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Sims 4, the EA SPORTS portfolio and Battlefield 4 will continue to see updates and new content in the future." That content will probably take the form of additional multiplayer stuff, but there's always the chance of some new singleplayer, too.
Update: An EA representative confirmed to Gamespot that the "most successful launch" metric was "based on units sold, but we are not disclosing that total."
