Electronic Arts (EA), the largest publisher of video games for consoles, yesterday moved to extend its dominance to games made for mobile devices with the $680m acquisition of Jamdat Mobile.
And it looks like they need it as sales are proving sluggish so far for the holiday season in the games console category. The reality is that only so many people can afford a games console at $300 and then individual games starting at $25. I want to give my son (who is nearly 6) an Xbox 360 this Xmas. The reality is that it will cost me a great deal more than just the $300 for the console. For there's no point me buying it for him if I don't get a handful of games. The chances of me getting away with spending much less that $500 are minimal.
Now, on a recent trip to London I bought the latest Sony Ericsson 3G mobile device. I got it free with Vodafone because they're subsidising the state of the art devices to get everyone to switch to 3G. And it had two games on it for free. I played them. They're fantastic. So I let my 6 year old boy have a go. He was instantly better than me at them both. So I bought some more games. At just over $5 a game they're great value. And with the powerful full feature phones of today with awesome screens I'm hooked.
So, EA is making the right move. Mobile gaming is the future and has to be far bigger than in-house gaming. But, they can't just convert console games to mobile. Making mobile games is a whole different art, so buying a specialist such as Jamdat makes great sense. EA will also need to be good at selling mobile games in Asia and Europe bacause that's where all the action is. The US mobile gaming market is backward and samll fry in comparison. And lastly EA has to play catch up in the mobile market. They are no where near the leaders they are in the console market. Good luck to them.
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