Electronic Arts Launches Comeback; Jumps Midday on ‘Apex’

Investing.com – The declaration of the short-term demise of videogame stocks may have been premature.

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:) stock soared midday after it announced its battle royal game “Apex Legends” attracted 10 million players in 72 hours.

Shares of EA jumped about 13%, making it the leader, and one of the few stocks in the green, in the S&P Communications Services index, which was down about 0.4%.

“Apex Legends” was created by EA division Respawn Entertainment and is designed to compete with other multiplayer battle-royal games, where the standard bearer is “Fortnite.”

“In 72 hours, over 10 million players have jumped into Apex Legends and we’ve breached 1 million concurrent players!” Respawn CEO Vince Zampella wrote on EA.com.

“We knew it would be risky to take the franchise in this direction, to go free to play, and do a surprise launch,” Zampella said. “But we fell in love with Apex Legends and wanted, needed, other people to play it too.”

By comparison, Fortnite reported a peak concurrent player level of 8.3 million, according to Engadget.

EA shares tumbled when it reported quarterly results that missed on revenue and guided earnings and revenue below consensus for its fiscal fourth quarter on Tuesday.

Other videogame stocks failed to rise the EA wave higher, though. Take-Two (NASDAQ:) fell 0.5% and Activision (NASDAQ:) lost 2.3%.

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