Publishing giant Electronic Arts spent a huge $1.43bn on research and development during 2018/19 financial year.

That's according to the firm's 10-K annual report with the United States' Securities and Exchanges Commission, in which the games publisher revealed that this was 29 per cent of its total net revenue for the 12 months ending March 31st, 2019.

That's an increase of $113m compared to the year before - or nine per cent - $65m of which was related to investing in new staff as well as the additional headcount that came as a result of EA buying Respawn Entertainment at the end of 2017. Another $38m was spent on stock-based payouts related to the purchase of the Titanfall studio, while $22m was spent on facilities.

Additionally, Electronic Arts spent $702m on marketing and sales for the 2018/19 year, 14 per cent of the company's net revenue, an increase of ten per cent year-on-year. This represented a $61m increase, largely due to pushing both BioWare's Anthem and free-to-play battle royale title Apex Legends.

For the 2018/19 year, PC and browser games made up just 15.8 per cent of the company's net revenue, bringing in $780m. That's a dip of 5.7 per cent year-on-year. Console brought in the lion's share of the $4.950bn total - $3.3bn - while mobile saw a 22.6 per cent increase, raking in $824m.