The console industry doesn't always treat mobile with the respect that we'd (obviously) say it's due. Yet the latest set of financial figures from Electronic Arts could change that.
In the third quarter of 2007, EA made a whopping great $640 million (£311m) in revenues from all its gaming platforms. But it's the breakdown that's interesting.
Xbox 360 was the publisher's biggest cash cow with $218 million (£106m), followed by PlayStation 2 ($73m/£35m), Wii ($59m/£29m), and DS ($47m/£23m). But next comes mobile with $37 million (£18m), ahead of PSP ($21m/£10m) and PS3 ($17m/£8m).
That's right. Just to restate the point, EA made more than double the revenues from mobile games than it did from PlayStation 3 in the third quarter this year. The info is
here if you don't believe us.
And that's before you think of the cheaper costs of developing those mobile games, compared to the PS3 titles.
Obviously, PS3 sales will increase as people finally start buying the console, but we still think it's an important stat that highlights the growth and importance of mobile gaming. As a bonus, it should hopefully stop any more mobile operator bigwigs claiming
mobile games are a niche.
The downside, mind, is that EA's mobile revenues in the third quarter of 2006 were $35 million, so they've only grown by 5.7 per cent in the last year, compared to rivals Gameloft (51 per cent) and Glu (34.9 per cent).
Joined:
Sep 2006
Post count:
20
I think this is just the beginning for mobile gaming!
Mobile and perhaps PC to a lesser degree are the true mass market gaming platforms. Once issues such as accessibility, data charging and consumer familiarity with the technology have been addressed I think we will see another surge in the popularity of mobile gaming.
The console developers/publishers that have dismissed mobile will soon find that they are the niche market. Console development will probably always be seen as a bigger, sexier and more complex activity but mobile will be the platform that takes video gaming to the true mass market.
Viva la revolucion!
Joined:
May 2007
Post count:
387
Cracking bit of analysis, the figures speak for themselves don't they?!
Having said that PS3 production costs will go down over time too i would imagine, i think EA would be relatively happy to break even on PS3 titles in the console's first year.
Agree with the sentiments above though, huge amounts of industry regulation are needed for mobile, saturation of the market to sort the wheat from the chaff, but the penetration rate of java enabled handsets is something even Nintendo could only dream of...
Joined:
Mar 2007
Post count:
1
Hey Stu,
Obviously I like the article <g>. I think as you know, I've always said people viewed mobile as the baby brother of gaming. However, that baby brother is going to grow up like they all eventually do. And if they're provided the right attention and environment to grow (improving discovery, shopping, marketing, flat rate, etc.) then baby bro can become big bro someday which is what all of us in the mobile business like to believe and are working towards...latest reports now say more than 3B people (and counting) on earth have phones...
Cheers, Mike
Mike Yuen
Senior Director, BREW Gaming Group
Qualcomm
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