Publisher calls for radical rethink of how mobile games are sold in Europe.
Electronic Arts says the European mobile games industry needs to broaden its business models in order to attract a wider audience.The company, which estimates Europe generated a healthy 100 million mobile game downloads in 2007, insists the sector needs to move away from the one-off transactions that comprise 99 per cent of the market today.
In a press briefing this morning Javier Ferreira, EA Mobile's VP of European publishing, said: "Casual gamers are very risk averse and won't spend time researching what's on offer before they buy. Therefore we need to use techiques like bundling and subscription to reduce the perceived risk."
For example, EA Mobile says it has operator support for bundled offerings that would give users access to five games for a monthly subscription roughly equivalent to a one-off download.
EA says operators that have broadened their models, like Verizon in the US and 3/Bouygues in Europe - have been rewarded with higher average usage of games.
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Ferreira added: "A hundred million downloads in 2007 shows that mobile games are no longer a niche product, but we need to close the gap between the five per cent of European mobile users Nielsen says pay to download a game and the 25 per cent that play [primarily embedded] mobile games."
EA has forecast that its own mobile revenues will increase 20 per cent in fiscal '09 to reach $185 million.
