There once was a time when Anthem looked to be positioned as the next big thing in gaming. It had impressive showings at E3, the pedigree of a celebrated studio like BioWare behind it, and a massive marketing campaign on the part of EA. However, when Anthem finally launched, it released to mostly negative reviews, with the game's reputation battered by one controversy after another. It seems as though this negative reception to Anthem took its toll on the game, with the online looter-shooter ultimately failing to meet EA's sales goals.

EA revealed this in a recent investors call, but stopped short of clarifying exactly how many units Anthem has sold. It's unclear how the underwhelming sales for Anthem will impact the game's support moving forward. But the poor sales combined with Anthem's dwindling player base (which is now causing matchmaking issues) paint a rather grim picture of the game's future.

However, it's not all doom and gloom for Anthem. EA also revealed that Anthem players played the game for a collective 150 million hours, which is a rather impressive statistic when one considers that the game just released this past February. Furthermore, EA also revealed that the Anthem digital sales made up more than its physical sales. Since digital sales largely cut out the retail store middleman, it could mean that EA still made more money from Anthem than expected, even if it didn't ship quite as many units as it would have liked.

anthem sales fail to meet ea's sales expectations

Some impressive stats aside, Anthem's future still seems like it's in jeopardy. The poor sales figures are one thing, but it's also worth pointing out that some key Anthem developers have now moved on to work on the new Dragon Age game. Furthermore, BioWare has had to delay Anthem's 90 day roadmap content that was supposed to bolster its endgame, which seems to have driven even some of the most dedicated fans away.

Despite this, BioWare still has a chance to turn things around with AnthemAnthem will apparently be featured at E3 2019 in some capacity, so perhaps we'll learn more how BioWare plans to fix Anthem at the show.

Anthem is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.