For many people the announcement that Titanfall 2 was even being made, was somewhat of a surprise. Although the original was initially popular, it fell off very, very quickly, with nothing like the staying power of more established shooter franchises. But hey, EA and developer Respawn ploughed on any way and released, by all measures, a pretty decent shooter once again.
But once again, it's failing to meet expectations.
Although reports are still a little scattered right now, our first indication things weren't going to plan was the UK's physical sales chart. Although digital counts for a much larger proportion of sales than it did in previous years, Titanfall 2 still didn't manage to meet the same physical sales as it did with the original game.
Financial services and investment banking firm Cowen, also announced that it had downgraded EA share quality due to expected poor sales of Titanfall 2. Initially slated by EA to sell as many as nine million copies, the now revised estimate is closer to six million. While hardly a failure, that would be substantially less impressive than it was planned for.
So what's gone wrong with Titanfall 2? It could be that the brand doesn't hold as much as it was expected - I think we all knew that from the performance of the original. Likely the bigger culprit though is the release time. Titanfall 2 dropped around the release of both Battlefield 1 (another EA game) and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.
It's no wonder that a third AAA shooter was going to struggle to compete with the industry's two biggest.
