EA rakes in 90% of earnings from digital

In the Holiday 2019 quarter, EA earned $1.593 billion in total revenues, and $1.444 billion from digital PC, console, and mobile games. Consoles raked in the lion's share of earnings with over $1 billion in revenues, or 72% of total gaming earnings. Both PC and console earnings were up by over 20% year-over-year.

Digital reigned supreme as always. EA made over 90% of its quarterly revenues from digital, including live services like Apex Legends' microtransactions and battle passes, as well as full game sales across all platforms. Jedi: Fallen Order in particular outperformed EA's expectations; it did so well EA is now re-thinking its approach to Star Wars games.

The publisher made $993 million from live services (roughly 68% of all quarterly earnings), representing a huge 27% year-over-year revenue spike.

Remember EA doesn't keep all of that money. Like any company that makes billions, it has to spend a hefty portion of those revenues on the cost of running a business. Of the $1.59 billion, EA spent $1.23 billion on cost of goods and services and operating expenses. This dropped total operating income to $361 million for the quarter.

"It was an excellent third quarter for Electronic Arts. With new games like the outstanding Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as well as our dynamic live services for FIFA, Madden NFL, Apex Legends and The SIMS 4, we delivered unmatched depth and breadth to players over the holiday season. As a result, our revenue and earnings for Q3 were above our guidance, growing significantly year-over-year for the quarter.

"We're raising our full year guidance for the second time this fiscal year, and we are on track to post a very strong year against our original projections for FY '20," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said.

As for the future, EA expects to ship 8 major AAA games in FY2021 including four sports games and four titles "that explore the breadth" of EA's intellectual properties. Most of these games will be optimized for next-gen consoles.

The biggest marquee game, a new Battlefield optimized for next-gen consoles, is coming in FY2022.