@ CTIA: Michael Marchetti, VP & COO EA Mobile

[by James Pearce] I spoke to Michael Marchetti, the vice president and COO of EA Mobile, at CTIA. He reckons that the big problem with the games market is billing and distribution. “We take the innovation of games for granted… The big innovation that is going to grow the market will be on the billing and shopping experience,” he said. To that end EA Mobile is spending a lot of time with carriers pushing for innovation of the commercial platform. The main things he is looking for is the ability to browse through content (such as in Japan, where they show a flash demo of the game before you buy it) and multiple access points to the game. It also needs to be unified, so that advertisements can give a single, clear instruction on how to get the game. Michael thinks games will be sold differently depending on whether they’re high-end games (premium pricing) or low-end games (bundled with other content and games)… a lot of this is based on carriers.
Acquisitions
EA Mobile is not ruling out any more acquisitions, but Michael said the company has none planned. If they did make an acquisition it would be based on either the intellectual property owned by the company, strength in a market where EA is weak, or some technology that would reduce the time to market for EA’s games.
Michael On Brands
Micheal is also a fan of using console brands in the marketplace (which is to be expected), but admits that “if you’re trying to recreate the experience it’s not going to live up to it”. However, he thinks that if you provide the portion of the experience that people like about the console game they’ll like the mobile game too… they want the storyline. “People want the brand and the feeling and you can do that on mobile.” He talked about Id, and claimed that the company is using mobile as a test space for storylines, and if it finds something that works it will take it to the other platforms.
The Future
EA is planning to link some mobile games to other platforms, such as Pogo and the Sims. More interesting, Michael noted that people like listening to music, and that he was thinking of what games people could play as they listened to music. It got me to thinking about that, about having a game that responded to the music being played. It would be hard to design, but if it was done well it would be fun to play, and could drive music sales and people bought new songs to ‘play’.
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