EA says Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations

5.5% of it anyway.
Hopefully they won't get indigestion from the Toxics at Activisionm

I think MS will acquire EA, WB, or UBISoft eventually because of inflation. The pile of money they have is shrinking so they need to buy something before inflation sucks it dry. Unless Apple develops a console, and controllers I do not see them buying game studios and the same goes for Netflix. Sony and Tencent are the biggest threat then Amazon and Google. I would not be surprised if MS is already in negotiations with more studios now along with Sony and Tencent. As a side note, EA is just a bunch of greedy business people who have no clue about the gaming industry, so it is not surprising they are/were in the top 5 most hated company. They have pretty much destroyed everything they have acquired. It would do EA a world of good if MS bought them since Phil Spence is a gamer and he knows what gamers want.

1- Netflix is *already* doing games. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/121442
2- Apple has been hiring away XBOX hardware employees. May mean a console or not but they *already* do games with controller on their AppleTV. And they have a gaming subscription service.
3- Take2 and Embracer are buying studios left and right.
4- Amazon has invested a lot of money into LUNA and THE NEW WORLD. Too much to stand pat, too little for LUNA to matter. They need to buy or sell. AWS is producing too much money to sell.
5- The same is true for Google and Stadia. Odds are they will sell but they too have too much cash and nowhere to use it. As a side note, Tencent has home grown problems of the CCP kind so they're not likely to buy anything just yet. And Sony, well, Sony just announced a grand stock boosting plan: internally develooing a whopping *ten* GAAS by 2026. Apparently they got a look at the Bungie books and Destiny profits and decided that single player third party narrative games aren't the most profitable way to go, after all. Note that the global gaming world is expected to grow by $200B over the next 5 years.
EA isn't the only outfit looking to the bottom line above everything else. FWIW, MS already owns 6 GAAS besides the 5 Activision owns. Likely why Sony wants 10 more and the terms Bungie is getting. So MS is already where Sony hopes to be in 5 years and are looking in other directions: MS is *netting* $60B+ a year growing at ~30%. By the time the Activision deal closes and they pay out the check the cash stash will be bigger than it was before the announcement. So no, they're not running out of cash any time soon. But buying game studios isn't the only productive way to spend. Keep an eye on Viacom and Warner-Discovery. If not MS, Apple or Google are likely to go shopping for video.

Me and a friend love BF, but this game was not ready and should not have shipped. I agree it would be a great game pass game

i know i am in a minority, everyone is crazy about multiplayer games these days. but i still prefer games which have the main theme as a single player campaign, with a gripping story line that makes you continue playing to find out what happens next. you can have multiplayer games inside too, as a side game. but the core should be single player- campaign- and should work offline.
best example i can give is a game i played recently- Jedi Fallen Order - amazing story, amazing single player campaign mode. and once i am done i can play multiplayer as well- also the star wars battlefront - the one with erso - also had a great capaign mode along with multiplayer.
when i heard of battlefirld, when i saw the trailers, i was excited. i have only recenntly got inerested in AAA gaming, and only recently i got a decent gaming laptop. so i was excited o try out battlefront- but then saw that it was only online!!! no campaign!! and so i never bought it!!
hopefully, the jedi fallen order sequel will maintain the good things- especially the single player mode. and other games too.

Different strokes and all that.
But no, not everybody is "crazy about multiplayer", not even most who play them.
There is room for all kinds of players and all kinds of games and will always be. Online, offline; single player, multiplayer, and both.
Thing is, today there are five distinct game classes:
- Single player
- Hybrid option
- Online, Game as a service
- Free to play
- Casual/Mobile
Each has a very different economic model for generating the revenue needed to keep producing games. The real divide isn't single player/multiplayer as much as it is "upfront pay" vs "engagement pay"; one time pay to play vs pay as you play. With variations and commingling: microtransactions. How a game is monetized invariably impacts its design. And with "AAA" games getting ever more expensive to develop the method chosen is going to be critical as the number of gamers it attracts will determine the success of a game. A great game that fails to catch on is going to be seen as a failure regardless of what critics might say. This is a long term issue for both gamers ($70 games with tons of microtransactions) and publishers. A trend to watch is what MS is trying with Halo: splitting campaign from the multiplayer-only, letting gamers pay for what they prefer, the way they prefer. And, for that matter, Gamepass, which disengages funding from game acquisition entirely.

Tried it, wasn't fun.