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EA making twice as much money from mobile as from PlayStation 3

And mobile is also outstripping PSP

EA making twice as much money from mobile as from PlayStation 3
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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).

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)