The total sales of Anthem seem to have exceeded 5M copies
And it might be even close to the break-even point. Despite all the troubles.
The troubled looter-shooter from Bioware was released on January 25, 2019. The game was preceded by a massive marketing campaign, and the release trailer was directed by Neill Blomkamp (director of District 9, Elysium, and Chappie).
The game's release was overshadowed by poor reviews from both critics and players. The project received 59 points on Metacritic, but users rated it even lower. Despite this, Anthem sold over 2 million copies in the first week—a remarkable result for a new IP.
Despite Bioware completely discontinuing support for the project in 2021, Anthem continued to sell. According to a former company marketer on Linkedin, the total sales of the game exceeded 5 million copies.
In February 2019, SuperData reported that the game had earned over $100 million (with $3.5 million coming from in-game purchases).
EA itself claimed that its target for lifetime sales was 6 million copies.
Considering that the game was heavily discounted (currently being sold for $0.99), it can be assumed that the game earned just over $120 million over its entire lifetime. Considering the development budgets from 2015 to 2019, it is quite possible that the game, after many years, has almost reached the break-even point. However, for an outside observer, the game's history is an undeniable failure
It won’t breakeven. Anything can sell 6 million units at $1. As someone great once told me, there are no bad games, only bad price points.