There’s a very interesting report on the sales estimates for Star Wars: Battlefront, the upcoming shooting game from DICE and Electronic Arts set within the Star Wars universe. The game is projected to bring in just under $800 million throughout the holiday season due to declining interest in the Battlefield franchise… according to the report.

GamesIndustry.biz did an interesting write-up on a sales estimate posed by SuperData Research, where SuperData CEO Joost van Dreunen claims…

“Mechanically, Star Wars Battlefront is based firmly in EA’s Battlefield franchise. With 7 million copies sold across platforms, including 1.7 million via full game download on console, Battlefield 4 proved successful, though heralded the decline of the franchise. Even as the console user base expands, sales of each new addition to the franchise has seen faster post-launch-month drops and digital earnings keep dropping faster,”

Ohhh… burn.

There’s a table chart showing what Electronic Arts’ estimated profit earnings will be like after all the expenses are paid. Check it out below.

The top-end of their profit earnings on Star Wars: Battlefront is $316 million, while the low-end of the spectrum puts them at $199 million. Technically, even if they’re looking at $199 million as the total profit from the venture then that’s not that bad. That would, I would assume, cover the cost of development and at least set EA up to produce another $100 million AAA title at the very least.

What’s actually more fascinating than SuperData’s estimates for Star Wars: Battlefront are the comments in the GI.biz article. Interestingly enough, there’s a debate about whether or not the game would sell more on Steam, even with a 30% cut going to Valve.

This has been a repeated discussion brought up whenever people discuss EA’s titles. I think in the case of Battlefield 3 they were clearly pushing some serious technical boundaries with the Frostbite engine and it was kind of the Crysis for that short window of gaming where it was a benchmarker’s wet dream. However, the series quickly waned with the buggy release of Battlefield 4 and the less-than-impressive release of Battlefield: Hardline.

SuperData isn’t wrong that perception of the series has waned in the community in the same way that the sales have waned. There is already a group of gamers who see Star Wars: Battlefront as just a re-skinned Battlefield; it’s not hard to imagine that coupling the tenuous appeal of the Battlefield series with a lack of presence on Steam could negatively impact the overall sales potential of Star Wars: Battlefront.

Nevertheless, a lot of the game’s tail-end sales and top-end sales potential will be determined by how well gamers actually spread the word about the title. SuperData was keen to point out that the lack of a server browser will likely hurt the appeal of the game in the more core communities, and I think with the rather limited gameplay features (such as not being able to hijack vehicles) the game could face an uphill struggle to build and maintain positive sales momentum throughout the holiday season after the initial marketing hype begins to fade.