EA: Mass Effect 2 PSN Sales are "Meaningful"

by Alex Co, posted on 08 March 2011 / 3,369 Views

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco last week, EA CEO John Riccitiello seemed pleased with the 12GB digital download sales of Mass Effect 2 over the PlayStation Network that released the same day and date as the retail edition.

"Sony had never done a day and date release," he said. "They were very cautious about their infrastructure so it was mostly a technology test."

Riccitiello admitted that while EA did "absolutely nothing" to market the PS3 version, the digital copy captured a double-digit percent of total sales for Mass Effect 2 on PS3. So far EA has not revealed any specific sales number since launch, other than saying it was “meaningful.”

"This was really more about proving it can be done than it was proving what the opportunity would be," he added. "So an unmarketed game one year after the original was done on the Xbox and the PC, we released the PS3 and managed to do very, very well with it."

Riccitiello also revealed that one of the major hindrances causing publishers from doing the same digital/retail release full game downloads are the retail policies of Sony and Microsoft.

"They have got to manage both selling boxes at retail, and it's generally a pretty thin margin business," he said. "And so they basically negotiate and leverage shelf space on the promise of making retail margin on software."

10 Comments

justinian (on 09 March 2011)

I didn't know the downloadable version was more expensive than the retail. How is that possible? Is there a lot more extras within that 12GB? If not why would anyone buy it? Just noticed you said more or less the same thing EmpireNO.

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EmpireNO (on 09 March 2011)

I was planning to buy ME2 from PSN, but when I saw that the digital version was almost twice the price of the store bought version. I bought the store version ofc, who would ever buy the PSN version when it's so much more expensive.

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geddesmond2 (on 09 March 2011)

@Binary Solo And then one of the person's consols your game sharing with accidently breaks or gets the YLOD leaving you with only 4 active accounts because the broken PS3 can't be de activated and thats not saying the games locked to one account like other full retail games have been in the past. Socom Confrontaion and GT5 only work on one PS3

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binary solo (on 08 March 2011)

"geddesmond2 Lol I bought this game brand new for 25 euros in HMV and its 60 euros on the PS Store. People were stupid buying the digital version." Lol? I think not. If I buy ME2 off PSN I can DL it on 5 activated PS3's thus if I split the cost of it with the owners of the other 4 PS3s 60 Euros in total becomes 15 Euros each (or rather $99 NZD becomes $20 NZD in my case). Still downloading 12 Gig on New Zealand broadband speeds is no small task, so I haven't decided which way to go yet. I definitely have 2 other people who will be willing to share the cost of digital ME2, but that still makes it $33 NZ each which is still a very good price. You can't even buy ME2 on 360 for that price here. Actually retail price here is $118, PSN price is $99 (last time I looked). So PSN is the way to go at the moment.

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Scoobes (on 08 March 2011)

EA must be loving the amount of revenue those digital sales are bringing in. The cost of the PSN version was huge and they don't have any retailer costs; just Sony's distributor fees.

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thismeintiel (on 08 March 2011)

Well, with VGC stating it sold ~ 260K and the statement that the PSN version captured a double-digit percent of total sales, that should put it at ~ 300K.

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geddesmond2 (on 08 March 2011)

Lol I bought this game brand new for 25 euros in HMV and its 60 euros on the PS Store. People were stupid buying the digital version. Lol its like EA are sitting in there offices saying screw it take the money people will save on traveling to get the game and add it to the download price.