We've known for quite some time that Electronic Arts' Battlefield 1943 "experiment" was successful, selling over a million units on Xbox Live alone, but now CFO Eric Brown has revealed some numbers on the game's development cost and revenue. The EA exec stated at UBS's 39th Annual Media and Communications Conference the the game cost "single-digit millions" to create and netted (after Sony and Microsoft took their cuts) a healthy $16 million for the publisher.
Brown explained that EA expects digitally distributed product to make up 20 percent of the company's revenue this fiscal year. Beyond Battlefield, Brown also noted significant revenue from FIFA's Ultimate Team mode, along with full-game PC downloads.
With BF:1943's success, it'll be interesting to see how the Battlefield:BFBC2 Vietnam expansion experiment works out. Boiled down, Vietnam is essentially the same downloadable game concept as 1943, but called a "multiplayer expansion" that requires a copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to play.
