Someone went deep into EA’s financials to find that the gaming giant actually makes more money with its mobile games than it does with releases on the super-high-end Sony PS3: the numbers are apparently $37m for mobile vs. $21m and $17m for PSP and PS3 respectively, and this is despite a shallow 5.7% revenue growth (industry leaders Gameloft grew by 51% in the same time).
However, one must of course take into account that the PS3 was only released in spring 2007, so will have a smaller install base and – arguably most importantly – it leaves aside the first big season for the PS3, namely the upcoming Christmas sales, which traditionally account for a huge amount of console and game sales.
It is nonetheless very encouraging that even mighty EA, despite the huge marketing effort by Sony, made more from mobile, which is still being perceived niche by many, than from Sony’s new flagship!
Gaming behemoth Electronic Arts announced it would be splitting the company into 4, namely EA Games, EA Sports, EA Sims and EA Casual. The first two cater for the classic console and specific sports properties respectively and – rather remarkably – the 3rd creates a whole division for one single property, namely the ludicrously successful Sims. It would seem that this is a sign for more to come, that is after Sims packs some of which 3rd party-sponsored/endorsed/branded. So we are probably here to see the first moves towards an MMO, an online community, etc, etc.
EA Mobile will become part of EA Casual (this piece had been announced a few days earlier). Reuters interestingly speaks of casual games as “games, which are usually played online or on mobile phones, are a small but rapidly growing part of the industry.” So now mobile games are already part of the “usual” – great news!
EA Mobile will surely continue to serve as the mobile extension for EA’s other divisions’ properties and licenses, such as Tiger Woods, FIFA, Need for Speed, Madden NFL etc. The division’s new President, Kathy Vrabeck formerly of Activision, at least mentioned something along those lines, so no big news here.
