Human, it is entirely possible EA beats despite the BFH weakness we've seen. They shipped those units for March 17 launch, and discounts to $39.99 started on March 29 at select retailers, right before the end of the Quarter. That will have had minimal effect on the numbers then, unless they take a write-down which isn't likely. It may have been a pre-determined plan to discount at that time, call it a sales promotion, although I doubt the price holding $39.99 for longer than one week was the plan. It may be that the poor BFH performance we've seen only hurts their ability to significantly beat last Quarter, or their ability to generate any significant current FY revenue and profits from the game, for which there is no current guidance. EA has been doing well with focus recently, preventing their winners like mobile and Ultimate Team being dragged down by the losers, and it's possible those areas are still doing better than we expect, and EA has been sand-bagging.

I see too a big discrepancy last Q4 and this Q4, with respect to a huge gap between GAAP and non-GAAP, which seems like something they could easily manipulate. Last year they reported GAAP/non-GAAP of $1123M/$914M revenue, and $367M/$152M net income. This year they forecast $1155M/$830M revenue, and $352M/$71M net income. In other words, higher GAAP revenue forecast teamed with lower non-GAAP eps forecast, a gap so large they could drive a truck through.

I agree with Jamok's comment too that the full game digital sale question mark is a gift for a company like EA. It's so easy for them and their analyst friends to pump this, and this is likely a factor in the forward non-GAAP 23x multiple.

I expected more analysts to comment on the Battlefield weakness, but conveniently they are mostly silent, despite the stock already being at their 12-month PT's. There was a Needham downgrade on March 10th which dropped the stock a few %, briefly, from $56.67 the day before to $54.51. There's been very little said about their biggest selling and highest margin owned IP though.