It’s no secret that EA hasn’t had a great time with PS3 games; this year has been marked by a long series of woeful efforts to port Xbox 360 games onto the PS3, which have not only barely scratch the surface in terms of the console’s capabilities but, worst of all, fall flat in comparison with the rival versions. It’s hardly surprising then that its business model has gone a bit skew-whiff, meaning that in the third quarter of this year EA squeezed more revenue out of its mobile phone games division than from PS3 games. More than double in fact.

Xbox 360 is still its biggest revenue winner, weighing in at a whopping $218m, while mobile phone gaming came in at $37m and its lamentable PS3 efforts on snapped it a paltry $17m. You can check all the figures for yourselves here, but honestly, it’s a very boring read.

So what? Mobile phone gaming has been seen as a potentially fantastic earner for games companies and EA has taken to it in earnest. It’s very much in that alluring ‘casual’ field, and because there are only about seven people left in Europe, North America and Japan who haven’t got a mobile, the install base is vast. Furthermore, a lot of mobile phone games look like they’ve been churned out by a half-stoned bedroom programmer but will sell regardless because, here in the UK at least, people have a bizarre habit of saddling themselves into subscription contracts that take a degree in cryptography to escape from, but bombard you with ringtones, wallpapers and games while you’re struggling in their icy tendrils.

Therefore, even the best mobile phone game in the world already requires a far lower development cost and has the potential to reach a wider audience than any given PS3 title, so while there is a good chance of garnering decent revenues, the low cost of mobile titles might make the profit margins a more interesting read. PS3 games meanwhile – and more so in Q3 prior to the price cuts and 40GB model launch – were expensive to build and for a not particularly enviable install base. So revenue wasn’t ever going to be that high, profits even less so.

Now that the PS3 install base is gathering pace, it would be interesting to see how the two figures compare again. On the other hand, maybe we’re just so fed up with EA failing to create reasonable PS3 ports that we’ve given up on buying their games, leaving them with all the crippling next-gen development costs, but none of the payback.

Source
PocketGamer

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