Mobile games consolidation heats up with Digital Chocolate and EA

They're not merging, but they are separately buying indie developers Sandlot Games and Bight Games.

Another day, another pair of mobile games acquisitions, as the industry continues to consolidate. Digital Chocolate has acquired casual games firm Sandlot Games, while Electronic Arts has bought freemium mobile games developer Bight Games.

Sandlot is best known for games like Cake Mania, Tradewinds and Westward, and is one of the more established casual games developers and publishers. Several of its titles have made the leap to mobile in the last three years.

For DChoc, this appears to be all about increasing its development capacity. "We love their development teams and we can now expand further in Seattle and Eastern Europe. We expect to be the leading game company in at least 5 of the 7 cities where we now have development studios," says CEO Trip Hawkins.

EA's acquisition of Bight Games is more directly mobile-related: it's the developer behind popular freemium game Trade Nations, although it has also worked on several EA Mobile games. The deal bolsters EA's capabilities in this area.

"The freemium game model in mobile is here to stay, and it’s growing fast. With the proliferation of choice in games and lessons learned from other platforms, consumer expectations are changing from early days where pay-per-download games were the de facto standard," writes EA's Barry Cottle in a blog post.