Electronic Arts is one of the kingpin publishers in the games industry, so it makes for a useful case study of how digital disruption is affecting that market in comparison to music. EA just announced its latest quarterly financials, too. “About 76 percent of our revenue this quarter was digital, not disc-based. We’re off to the races,” its president of EA Labels Frank Gibeau tells VentureBeat in a post-earnings interview, which also includes this startling claim: “The quarter was a bit of an anomaly because we didn’t put out any blockbuster console titles, but our biggest retail partner, measured by dollar volume, in Q1 was not Best Buy or GameStop. It was Apple. That’s never happened before.” Note the ‘no blockbuster console games’ caveat, but it’s a sign of Apple’s growing importance in the games industry through iOS and the App Store, with EA currently making hay from freemium games like The Simpsons Tapped Out, The Sims Free Play and Real Racing 3. “Mobile, for me, is an unbelievable platform for gaming. It’s driven most of the growth since the last cycle changed over,” says Gibeau.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…