The future is looking bright for single-player games in the Star Wars universe.
During yesterday’s Q3 earnings call, EA COO/CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that Respawn Entertainment’s Jedi: Fallen Order has managed to sell far better than anticipated. The action-adventure game performed so well that the publisher is expecting 10 million copies sold by the end of March, a 2 million increase from initial estimates.
“Sales of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order significantly beat our expectations. We had forecast 6 million to 8 million units for the fiscal year, but hit the high end of that in the third quarter, and we now anticipate selling around 10 million units in the fiscal year, a very strong result for a single-player action game.”
Those figures fall short of your average AAA multiplayer title (the latest Star Wars: Battlefront games have sold over 30 million copies), but Jorgensen’s ending statement does pave the way for more solo, story-driven games in EA’s future. With these being less of a gamble, a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, in particular, seems quite assured.
Respawn’s Brand Strategy Director Charlie Houser has already confirmed his team’s willingness to continue Cal Kestis’s story. That may be of little surprise, since Fallen Order’s ending implied that the Jedi’s adventures were far from over.
“We’ve had an absolute blast [making Fallen Order]. For a new team thats come together at Respawn, its been a lot of learning to pull this off. Pending player reaction and feedback, and how everyone’s feeling about it, we would love to continue making awesome experiences and stories and keep telling that story in Star Wars.”
New job listings spotted in December (a Senior Character Artist, Level Designer, and Senior Software Engineer) also revealed that Respawn was seeking additional hires for its “Star Wars team,” which is already hard at work on a “third person action/adventure game.”