EA

EA grabs Hands-On Mobile's Korean unit

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Interactive entertainment software giant Electronic Arts announced an agreement to acquire the assets of mobile developer and publisher Hands-On Mobile Korea. Financial terms were not disclosed. A subsidiary of U.S.-based connected games and applications developer Hands-On Mobile, the firm is best known for its mobile role-playing title Heroes Lore; according to EA Mobile, the deal is central to its Asian development and publishing growth outlook. Following completion of the deal, the Hands-On Mobile Korea unit will be renamed EA Mobile Korea, and will work within the management structure of the existing EA Mobile Asia Publishing organization.

For more on the EA/Hands-On Mobile agreement:
- read this release

Related articles:
EA Mobile scores Taito game licenses
EA Mobile kicks off content, news site
EA: 'We are going off-deck'
EA to go direct-to-consumer for m-games

EA Mobile scores Taito game licenses

Tue, 20 May 2008 06:59:56 -0400

Interactive entertainment software firm Electronic Arts announced its EA Mobile division has secured exclusive European mobile distribution and licensing rights to gaming giant Taito Corporation's catalog of titles, including arcade classics Space Invaders, Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble. Per terms of the deal, EA lands rights to Taito properties across all existing mobile channels and mobile devices as well as emerging mobile channels and platforms.

For more on the EA Mobile/Taito deal:
- read this release

Related articles:
EA Mobile kicks off content, news site
EA: 'We are going off-deck'
EA to go direct-to-consumer for m-games

ALSO NOTED: EA Mobile debuts Tetris Blockout; Aspiro acquires mobile marketing firm My Mobile World; and much more...

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:59:53 -0500

> EA Mobile debuts Tetris Blockout. Article

> Content provider Aspiro acquires mobile marketing firm My Mobile World. Release

> Glu partners with Fox Mobile Entertainment for Ice Age games and content. Release

And finally… RIP Alain Robbe-Grillet. Article

Verizon counts down 2007's most popular games

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:59:55 -0500

Verizon Wireless announced the 10 most successful mobile games introduced by the operator in 2007. The countdown:

1. Tetris by EA Mobile (New 2007 version)
2. Smarter Than A 5th Grader? by Capcom Entertainment
3. Guitar Hero III by Hands-On Mobile Americas
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by Glu Mobile
5. Need for Speed ProStreet 3D by EA Mobile
6. Diner Dash 2 by Glu Mobile
7. Assassin's Creed by Gameloft
8. Madden NFL 08 by EA Mobile
9. The Simpsons by EA Mobile
10. God of War: Betrayal by Sony Pictures Digital

For more on 2007's top-selling VZW titles:
- read this release

Related articles:
Verizon Wireless adds games from Smashing Ideas
Verizon Wireless tunes up Guitar Hero III
Multiplayer gaming plagued by latency issues

ALSO NOTED: Sprint rejects $5 billion SK Telecom investment; Nokia launches social networking service in China; and much more..

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:59:53 -0500

> Sprint rejects $5 billion SK Telecom investment. Article

> Nokia launches social networking service in China. Article

> EA Mobile teams with LEGO. Release

And finally… Policeman blames inmate abuse on plumbing system demon. Article

ALSO NOTED: EA Mobile to launch SimCity Societies; watchmaker TAG Heuer, design firm Modelabs team on mobile handsets; and much

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:59:53 -0500

> EA Mobile to launch SimCity Societies. Release

> Watchmaker TAG Heuer, design firm Modelabs team on mobile handsets. Article

> Arvato Mobile inks content management and delivery deal with m-Wise. Release

And finally… South Dakota town mulls whether to rename Hooker Street. Article

Broadcom, EA Mobile partner to expand gaming experience

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:59:57 -0500

Semiconductor developer Broadcom Corporation announced an agreement with Electronic Arts to power EA Mobile game titles. Broadcom will optimize the EA Mobile properties via its VideoCore III mobile multimedia processor, which supports high definition content promising mobile handset graphics performance equivalent to dedicated handheld game consoles. According to Broadcom, VideoCore III features on-chip advanced 2D and 3D graphics accelerators and efficient audio technology ideally suited for mobile gaming--its low-power graphics pipeline is optimized for efficient hardware acceleration of the OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics standard, and supports 3D gaming with rendering performance up to 32 million triangles per second. Gamers may also play titles residing on the mobile handset on televisions up to HD resolution via an included HDMI output.

For more on the Broadcom/EA Mobile deal:
- read this release

Related articles:
EA Mobile reports earnings
EA Mobile announces executive changes
EA Mobile kicks off content, news site
EA: "We are going off-deck"

Game on for Sprint Arcade

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:59:58 -0400

Sprint announced the launch of the Sprint Arcade, a subscription channel for casual games enabling customers to download multiple titles for a flat monthly fee of $9.99. Powered by EA Mobile, the Sprint Arcade presently features titles including Sudoku, Mini Golf, Mahjong, Hearts, Air Hockey and Blue Blocks, with more to follow. "The Sprint Arcade gives our customers the ability to choose the games that interest them," said Sprint games manager Joe Ariganello. "By paying one low monthly fee, mobile gamers get the opportunity to select and play any of the six games we are currently providing from EA Mobile."

For more on the Sprint Arcade:
- read this release

Related articles:
Sprint revamping TV service
Sprint joins MediaFLO cabal
Sprint, Anime Network team to draw mobile viewers
Sprint earnings boosted by data growth

4th Screen inks mobile advertising deal with ITV

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 06:59:55 -0400

Mobile advertising agency 4th Screen Advertising announced it signed an extended contract with British national broadcaster ITV. The deal follows a six-month trial, during which time 4th Screen Advertising ran multiple mobile campaigns via ITV's WAP portal for brands including Orange, O2, Nokia, Lynx, EA and Samsung. The agreement spans ad-serving and sales for ITV's on-portal advertising inventory, as well as media planning search marketing services.

For more on the 4th Screen/ITV agreement:
- read this Brand Republic article
- and this release from 4th Screen Advertising

Related Article:
Ministry drops a bill with MIG. Report

C&L: EA Mobile Europe names Tim Harrison director of marketing

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:59:50 -0400

EA Mobile Europe names Tim Harrison director of marketing.

Ironroad appoints Mats Dahlin chairman.

New Motion names Sue Swenson COO.

C&L: EA Mobile names Barry Cottle general manager

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:59:50 -0400

EA Mobile names Barry Cottle general manager.

Orange appoints Katrien Barrat multimedia and convergence director.

Dialogue Communications names Dr. Guillaume Peersman managing director.

ALSO NOTED: Nuance intros GPS-based mobile voice search for BlackBerry smartphones; Universal Music Group makes equity investme

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:59:53 -0400

> Nuance intros GPS-based mobile voice search for BlackBerry smartphones. Release

> Universal Music Group makes equity investment in Loud.com. Release

> Electronic Arts appoints Barry Cottle GM of EA Mobile. Article

And finally… Shamed Thai police forced to wear Hello Kitty armbands. Article

EA Mobile announces executive changes

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:01:37 -0400

Gaming giant Electronic Arts announced the appointment of Michael Marchetti to the position of senior VP and GM of its EA Mobile division. Marchetti, who previously served as EA Mobile's VP and COO, will assume his new role on April 2, and will oversee all production, distribution and global strategic initiatives. Marchetti joined EA in 2006 with the company's $680 million acquisition of Jamdat Mobile, where he spent six years as CFO.

Marchetti's new role coincides with the exit of EA's executive VP and president of mobile and online Mitch Lasky, who announced he will join venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as a general partner. Lasky served as Jamdat CEO during its 2004 IPO and a year later led negotiations with EA. "As the ecosystems of gaming, entertainment and mobile technologies converge, Mitch has the inside track on the publishers, mobile carriers and talented entrepreneurs--both inside and outside traditional Silicon Valley circles--who are pushing the margins of new media," said Benchmark general partner Bill Gurley in a prepared statement. "He brings a rare blend of business judgment, practical experience and passion to everything he works on, and has the hands-on experience of taking a raw idea and turning it into a leading global company."

For more on the Marchetti appointment:
- read this release

For more on the Lasky move:
- read this release

Related articles:
- EA Mobile kicks off content, news site
- EA: 'We are going off-deck'
- EA to go direct-to-consumer for m-games

O2 and EA give away free mobile games

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:01:35 -0500

As part of its Long Weekends content promotion campaign, British operator O2 is teaming with game developer Electronic Arts (EA) to launch "Mobile Monday." Each Monday during the month of December, O2 subscribers may download one of four EA titles for free: The games include "Tetris," "The Sims 2," "FIFA '06" and "Need for Speed Carbon."

For more on the giveaway:
- read this article

EA boosts parent company revs

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:01:36 -0400

Looks like Electronic Arts' $680 million acquisition of Jamdat Mobile is paying dividends. In its first-quarter earnings report, the company revealed that the EA Mobile subsidiary formed by the acquisition raked in $33 million in revenues--that's 8 percent of the $413 million revenues for the entire firm. "Tetris" remains its top-selling mobile game, out of the 2,000 titles in the market today worldwide.

For a full accounting of EA's results:
- read the earnings release here

More from EA's Boatman on m-gaming quality

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:01:36 -0400

Mobileindustry.biz is running the second part of its interview with EA's executive producer of mobile studios Travis Boatman. Boatman rehashes the importance of quality in m-gaming for first time users and talks vaguely about the transition into EA from Jamdat. "If you're a consumer and... if you're just blindly buying games and you look on the carrier's deck and you say 'I'm going to give this game a try,' but you have no idea of the quality and there are no screenshots or images, and you buy it and it's a bad game, you're going to say 'You know what, I'm not going to buy another mobile game.' Consumers are not going to come back," Boatman says. It's especially true for brand name games like Madden or Need for Speed, according to the exec.

For more on the EA interview:
- read this article from Mobileindustry.biz

Chutes & Ladders: Hand-On names McCurdy prez

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:01:35 -0400

Hands-On Mobile (formerly MForma) has named ex-EA executive Keith McCurdy to the new position of president of studios and products. McCurdy "will be responsible for the company's worldwide games and product strategies, including the management of all development studios as well as relationships with licensing partners." McCurdy most recently served as president and CEO of Blaze Entertainment (previously Kayak Interactive), a global mobile games publisher based in San Mateo, CA, but before that he worked at EA for 10 years in various positions, including VP of product management.

For more on McCurdy's new role at Hands-On:
- see this press release

SPOTLIGHT: EA Mobile responds to off-deck claims

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:01:34 -0400

EA Mobile's Mitch Lasky did a follow-up interview with Gamespot.com to clarify a speech Lasky gave a few weeks ago that led everyone to believe the games giant was going off-deck. Apparently, EA meant it was only going off-deck to market their games. The plan is to allow users to buy games without having to navigate the carrier deck, but still buying through the carriers. I see it as a transitional step toward going off-deck, an indomitable trend that has already swept Europe and is sure to take root here in the U.S. As is already evident, fear of retaliation from carriers will make it slow-goings. Take a listen to the original speech here: Webcast Check out Lasky's follow-up comments here: Interview

EA: 'We are going off-deck'

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:01:40 -0400

While there are many shades of gray, whether EA Mobile is going off-deck is not one of them. They are. At least, that's what Mitch Lasky said last Friday at the Harris Nesbitt Games Go Mobile Conference in New York City. Like IGN, Gamespot and others, EA asked us to remove the story we ran yesterday about the mobile gaming giant's off-deck plans, but EA's PR agent would not give us a reason. So we kept it. If you listen to the audio webcast EA posted on its corporate site, it becomes clear that the focus of Lasky's speech was the company's plan to go off-deck, with slides exhibiting a Web-to-mobile shopping application (slide 14). An EA press release that went out before the speaking engagement promises the webcast will remain available on the site until June 22, 2006.

Here is an overview of Lasky's speech with full quotes: "We're looking at innovative ways to reach consumers, fundamentally, we're not planning to do this again in the conventional off-deck manner." Investors had an enormous amount of interest in the Jamba/Jamster strategy that VeriSign "was propagating which was, you know, off-deck selling through the Web and through short code marketing on television. We resisted that, what I would call 'the siren's song' of that off-deck model because to us it just seemed like a blatant marketing arbitrage and there would always be somebody out there that was willing to spend more money on advertising in order to make a slightly lower margin on the content."

Here's where it gets interesting: "We are going off-deck but we are going to do it in a way that leverages our competitive advantages and our consumer reach. We've created and intend to launch a series of integrated desktop, console and mobile community applications like the one I've shown here that's gonna allow us to create network effects leveraging EA's tremendous marketing reach and packaged goods reach." Lasky then describes the off-deck application: "What you see here is a desktop-to-mobile version of this where content can literally be dragged and dropped onto the little Java application in the corner that appears immediately on the mobile phone along with the customized ringtone. In addition to providing increased marketing relevance and a deeper emotional connection to our brands these remarkable new applications will open up new ways for us to sell directly to our customers without the necessity of spending tens of millions of dollars running ads on MTV, etc."

There are plenty of other relevant quotes and you can read the larger excerpts here.

According to the slides that accompanied Lasky's presentation: EA Mobile had a 31 percent market share of the U.S. mobile game publishing sector in Q1 2006, which is over three times the market share of the next largest publisher in the U.S. The company also expects its "net revenue from games for cellular handsets to increase significantly from $19 million in fiscal 2006," according to its 10-K form.

Without a doubt, EA is now the biggest name in U.S. mobile gaming, and that's why its move into off-deck is so important for consumers and worrisome for carriers. The transition to off-deck is an inevitable one, but the carriers' role in an off-deck value chain is yet to be determined. As Anil Malhotra, SVP at Bango writes in: "While direct-to-consumer mobile content is by definition marketed and delivered outside the carrier deck, this does not mean it by-passes the carrier." Potentially, carriers can still play a role in off-deck models by enabling users to browse and buy content simply and by handling the billing end. Off-deck growing pains are sure to continue, but until a big content provider like EA stands up and embraces the transition, it's going to be a rockier ride. - Brian

Partial Transcript

EA Mobile
Mitch Lasky, SVP
Harris Nesbitt Games Go Mobile Conference, NYC
June 15, 2006

Listen to the audio of the webcast here.

Check out the presentation's slides here.

"…And then finally—um—we're looking at innovative ways to reach consumers, fundamentally, we're not planning to do this again in the conventional off-deck manner—ah last year when we were a public company, an independent public company we were on the road and we were talking to investors and they had an enormous amount of interest in Jamba Jamster strategy that verisign was propagating which was you know off deck selling through the Web and through short code marketing on television. We resisted that, what I would call the siren's song of that off deck model because to us it just seemed like a blatant marketing arbitrage and that there would always be somebody out there that was willing to spend more money on advertising in order to make a slightly lower margin on the content—it didn't seem like a good defensible business that we could invest in. And I think the results over time have shown that we were correct in that assessment. We are going to go off-deck but we are going to do it in a way that leverages our competitive advantages and our consumer reach. We've created and intend to launch a series of integrated desktop, console and mobile community applications like the one that ive shown here that's gonna allow us to create network effects leveraging EA's tremendous marketing reach and packaged goods reach. What you see here is a desktop to mobile version of this where content can literally be dragged and dropped onto the little Java application in the corner that appears immediately on the mobile phone along with a customized ringtone. In addition to providing increased marketing relevance and a deeper emotional connection to our brands these remarkable new applications will open up new ways for us to sell directly to our customers without the necessity of spending tens of millions of dollars running ads on MTV, etc. We intend to go after an off-deck strategy but we intend to do it in a way that preserves our core values of scalability and profitability. So as you can see we are not standing still waiting for some mythical inflection point to create demand for us, we are actively trying to create new demand for mobile content, demand that we can monetize in a profitable, scalable and defensible way. To say it another way we're calling plays from the old Jamdat playbook, seeking growth in new markets while maintaining our dominant position in the current ones. But this time we got the brands, the resources and the reach of the number company in interactive entertainment creating a very brisk wind at our back. It's really exciting, ah.. really exciting time to be in this industry right now I think that the quality of the companies you're going to see today is very high. I think it's going to be a very exciting day, I'm very excited to be here…"

Q&A Period

"The ability to do Web-mobile-to console—stuff that Microsoft is only talking about right now in their Xbox live anywhere initiatives and we're actually creating them… and so that's really where the dollars are going…"

"…Yeah you know I thought for some time that we're sort of coming up against the edge of what's possible given the current deck structure and the current way of merchandising content on mobile phones and I think you know some of the doom and gloom scenarios that I think have been unfairly propagated about mobile gaming out there really stem from the fact that we are bumping up against the limits of the utility of the text based messaging—the text-based menu and the kind of shopping experience that I showed some examples of in my presentation. That said, I think the carriers all recognize this. I think they're all looking for ways to do this and ways to do this where they can continue to preserve their brands and their, you know, they would like to say their "control" of the customer, well that's really kind of unfair that's not what they're trying to do, they're really trying to preserve a uniquely Verizon or Cingular experience, however, in the last year I think we've seen a lot of movement and activity toward um innovative new ways of shopping and we've brought a number of those initiatives to the carriers which they've been quite excited about—even the ones that have traditionally been the most protective. So you know expect to see at a minimum a hotter experience, more graphics, more demonstrability of the titles and downstream I think you can look at more interesting value propositions like channeling and bundling and other things like that."

EA to go direct-to-consumer for m-games

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:01:38 -0400

EA Mobile's senior VP Mitch Lasky said that EA will soon sell mobile titles directly to consumers (D2C) and bypass mobile carriers entirely. The new, off-deck strategy will allow the company to release "a series of integrated desktop, console, and mobile community applications...that is going to allow us to create network effects, leveraging EA's tremendous marketing reach and packaged goods reach." Lasky went on to demo a "desktop to mobile" application where users can buy games online and drag them directly to their mobile phones. The off-portal strategy comes as no surprise as an increasing number of U.S.-based mobile content providers are taking their cues from their European counterparts and going D2C.

For more on EA's off-deck shift:
- read this short blurb from Gamasutra