through completion without paying anything. But a decent number of people will convert to paying and they may not pay a lot but most will pay more than you’d think.
How far can freemium infiltrate the games industry, do you think? Is it just for casual games? I think about this question a lot. I don’t know if freemium gets to console but I do know that humans like free stuff. I also know humans will pay for something if they’ve tried it and liked it. I’ve wondered myself, if freemium expands beyond the tablet, Facebook and smartphones, and out into consoles? I don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen.
EA’s mobile games were shown away from the E3 show floor. Why? Just because we were not on the floor does not mean that we don’t take this as seriously as our console stuff. The digital side does not deliver the same revenue as the console business but it’s the fastest growing part of the company. We did $1.2bn in digital revenue last year and we’re expecting to do $1.7bn this year. There are very few companies that are in the $1bn club for digital.
EA’s press conference did largely focus on your core games. Do you see a time when it’s a mobile game that opens the show for EA? Yes I absolutely do. My sense is that next year we will see a different press conference in terms of the diet of products being offered. My sense is that we will have big mobile/social hits under our belts by then and we’ll have a confidence about what we’re doing. We’ll have a tech structure to be able to support data-rich games with high daily average users. I think we will not be worried about graphics not being of Battlefield 3 standard, and it’s so much more
about the accessibility, portability and game mechanic of what a mobile game can offer. We’ll want to show that to the world. My sense is that next year, that happens. Maybe in five years, mobile and social will have its own show, I don’t know. The way we look at it is that mobile and social is an inherently compatible part to the rest of the business and that’s why we try to take our franchises and span them out across all devices. From that perspective I would say that mobile and social will just creep across and be a normal part of a demonstration than say an Xbox 360 or a PS3.
Are tablet gamers different to smartphone gamers? They definitely differ. People who play on a tablet play for longer and they tend to be more core. The phone is the most portable device, it’s with you all the time. Everybody at E3 had a smartphone on them. Not everyone carried a tablet with them. Those that have one, it’s maybe in the office or on the couch. One of the metaphors I use is
‘snacks’ which is playing games on your phone. A ‘heavy snack’ is playing a longer game on a tablet and a ‘full meal’ is console gaming.
Is there a rise in core gamers coming into mobile? Yes, and that’s why EA Sports, EA Games, Bioware and Maxis are making mobile and socia games. We believe core fans want to play on mobile and social. They’re different from the EAi customer, which are truly casual in nature and play games like Scrabble.
How does, say, the Mass Effect iOS game perform compared to your casual-only titles? The likes of Angry Birdsare bigger than the core games right now. I think the core games are going to
EA’s ad-based casual games portal Pogo is currently being modernised to work across multiple devices
start to grow in popularity. Need for Speed and Mass Effecthave done well. We’re seeing engagement go up in franchises which are across multiple devices. The lifetime value of that customer is way higher than what it used to be when the only chance for monetising was a $60 boxed game.
My sense is that next year we will see a different EA E3 press conference in terms of the diet of products being offered.
“ Nick Earl, EAi
EAi is focused on mobile and social titles not based on EA’s owned IP. So games like The Simpsons, Tetris and Monopoly
What’s the secret to promoting mobile and social games? A lot of the promotion happens in the environment, so being on the App Store feature list is a way to promote it. We do launch marketing, but a lot of the marketing happens within the game through virality and that’s a big part of how to design these games. You want them to be inherently social and you want to be able to put hooks in them. Say, we’re friends on Facebook and I’m playing Scrabble, I can hit one button and create a game with you. That is a form of marketing because if you don’t have it and you get the invite from me you will download it.
The other part is to have some sort of ubiquitous, acquisition funnel that brings people in and knows who they are, who their friends are and what kind of games they are into and puts that offering in front of them. It’s sort of like a clothing store where you get the clerk size you up and says let’s try these clothes. Guiding you to the things you will respond to is what our digital platform is hopefully going to do. You come in through whatever means, whether it’s your PC, or phone, or Origin, and it knows who you are, what kind of games you play, how often you game, who your friends are and what they’re playing. It’s able to intelligently get you to a game.
Check out the last three issues of MCV for interviews with EA Sports, EA Origin and EA Games.