Mitch Lasky's views on the physical/digital transition didn't go down too well with his former employers.
Former Jamdat and EA Mobile boss Mitch Lasky has ruffled feathers at his former employer by criticising its corporate strategy.
In a blog post earlier this week, Lasky claimed that "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again."
Lasky argued that EA hadn't been bold enough in preparing for the transition from packaged games to digital - including new business models involving virtual items.
He followed up yesterday with another post clarifying his views: "True leadership in the games business is going to mean betting the farm on these [digital] models and abandoning the CD-ROM as anything other than an alternative to downloading."
EA isn't taking the criticism lying down, though. Its head of corporate communications Jeff Brown has retaliated with a stinging quote on VentureBeat:
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"Mitch needs to try de-caf. It’s never easy being turned down for a job, but most people don’t spend three years obsessing about it. Since Mitch left EA, Apple invented the iPhone, Facebook evolved to include a gaming platform and EA Mobile became the world leader."
What does all this have to do with mobile entertainment, other than Lasky's former role at EA? iPhone - and to some extent other smartphones - are an important plank in the emerging digital strategies of big games firms like EA - as the publisher's comment shows.
Something tells us this debate isn't over yet, though.
