EA reports mobile games revenues of $70m and reveals Firemint price

Mobile more than PSP and DS combined, and only just behind Wii.

Games publisher Electronic Arts generated $70 million of GAAP net revenues from mobile in the first quarter of 2011 - its fiscal Q4 2011. That's up 27% from the $55 million of mobile sales it reported for the quarter a year earlier.

By comparison, EA made $16 million from PSP games in the quarter and $28 million from DS titles, although bear in mind that this was the quiet post-Christmas quarter for traditional game sales.

That also explains why mobile was nearly level with Wii for the quarter too - Nintendo's console generated $71 million of revenues for EA. Mobile now accounts for 6% of EA's overall revenues.

In its SEC filing, EA said that it held 15 of the top 25 paid games on Apple's App Store over the Easter weekend, with iOS revenues specifically increasing "by more than 100%" during the quarter, compared to its fiscal Q4 2010.

CEO John Riccitiello banged the drum for EA's cross-platform strategy during the follow-up analyst call. "We are the only company with world-class teams working across platforms on social, mobile, and console development. We are integrating these teams and augmenting them with product monetization and marketing. It's a big change."

He also talked about the way EA is focusing on its internal Nucleus platform to change the way it sees its customers. "The conversation that's driving EA at this point is really more about the lifetime value of a consumer or customer, less the acquisition cost for that customer. And what Nucleus gets us is the opportunity to build directly against that type of a business model which can yield that more profitable business."

How does that relate to mobile? He explained. "If you interact with our mobile games, our iPad games, you'll see, not only are you playing the Dead Space game on iPad, you're seeing the rest of our content come along with it. If you're interacting with a Chillingo product, whether it's Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, and you're involved in the Crystal platform there, you're seeing a lot of things under the surface that I think yield the best insight into where we're going as a company."

Meanwhile, EA's Eric Brown talked on the call about the company's plans to acquire iOS developer Firemint. "As we look at the acquisition, overall on price, it's less than $25 million," he said. "If we look at the actual EBIT multiple, it's in the 4x range. And so, by any metric, it's a great pick up and we're super excited to have that talented team join EA."

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