During a quarterly earnings call, Electronic Arts executives expressed their optimism for the digital download market on reports of strong financial progress in the sector. EA CEO John Riccitiello reported that the company had seen its digital direct revenue grow to $400 million in the last fiscal year, while CFO Eric Brown noted that digital game distribution alone nearly doubled in revenue year-over-year to $80 million.
"This is a big year for us," said Brown. "The online part of our business is growing as much as 60% year over year."
"In terms of distribution, the way we look at a lot what's happening in the future is, we've got probably a billion PCs out there in the world," he continued. "Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world, just not in a packaged-good product."
"As you look at what that means in terms of distribution of product, we think that's incredibly exciting because it's going to open the market to new demographics, new countries and new types of gameplay," he added.
FonteEA showed it released more games for PC than for any other platform last year, with 360 leading the company’s focus for console hardware.
Releases for fiscal 2009, ending March this year:
- PC: 32
- Xbox 360: 26 games
- PS3: 23 games
- DS: 22
- Wii: 21
- PS2: 14 games
- PSP: 8
- Xbox: 1
FonteEA’s reported a shell-shock $1.08 billion loss for the financial year ending March 2008.
Revenue for the period was up to $4.2 billion, a 15 percent rise from the previous year’s $3.6 billion.
“EA’s strong cost actions in Q4 FY09 together with our investments in our digital service businesses will set us up for a stronger FY10,” said CEO John Riccitiello.
“EA is well positioned with the right strategies in a growing industry.”
The company said that more than 31 games in the year sold more than 1 million units, up from 27 in the previous year.
Q4 loss was $42 million, or 13 cents a share, narrowed from a loss of $94 million, or 30 cents a share in the same period last year.
Q4 revenue was $860 million, down $267 million compared with $1.13 billion for the prior year.
Não se está propriamente a "tornar", já é a maior plataforma actualmente, como os vários reports e análises têm vindo a confirmar. Mas é bom que a EA tenha constatado isso e esteja disposta a ajustar o seu modelo de negócios para tirar proveito da plataforma.
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