EA Looking to Get More “Digital Service” Social Games Onto Facebook

During today’s Q4 earnings call, EA reported more growth in its digital segment: net digital revenue for the quarter rose to $211 million, 46% above the same period a year earlier, and net income went to $151 million from $30 million. The very broad “digital” segment includes social games developed by Playfish or separately,  as well as other “digital service” casual and browser games that are treated as extensions of packaged console goods, the same as downloadable content. In other words, these numbers don’t give a clear picture about how Playfish in particular is doing.

EA said that it currently has 15 of these “digital service” titles in beta testing, though the company did not say whether or not all of these titles were planned for Facebook. Some digital service games that EA seems especially proud of — like FIFA Online — are only available on EA.com or the franchise’s website. In total, the FIFA franchise brought in more than $100 million in revenues across the packaged products and online services like FIFA Online as well as Facebook’s FIFA Superstars.

We’re combing Facebook for any possible EA digital service game betas that align with the publisher’s existing franchises. So far, we were able to find what looks like a Need for Speed Facebook game in closed beta.

It’ll be interesting to see if and how EA differentiates revenues generated from Playfish social games developed as original intellectual property for Facebook and from Facebook incarnations of its console products like Dragon Age Legends. Right now, it’s unclear whether Dragon Age Legends is counted in the “PC (MMO, Download, PDLC)” subcategory under digital revenues or under the “PC (Free to Play, Casual, Social)” where we expect to see Playfish game revenues:

Across all its live games, EA enjoys 34 million monthly active users and 5.4 million daily active users. Follow the company on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

AppData - Facebook application stats and data from Inside Network

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4 Responses to “EA Looking to Get More “Digital Service” Social Games Onto Facebook”

  1. EA’s Sims Studio & Playfish Bring The Sims to Facebook in The Sims Social says:

    [...] its Q4 earnings report earlier this spring, EA said its experience with Dragon Age Legends on Facebook was enough to [...]

  2. EA’s Sims Studio & Playfish Bring The Sims to Facebook in The Sims Social « Mystickarma's Blog says:

    [...] its Q4 earnings report earlier this spring, EA said its experience with Dragon Age Legends on Facebook was enough to [...]

  3. Could BioWare Be Preparing a Mass Effect Social Game? says:

    [...] shattered it even before the game was actually live. Even so, EA singled out Dragon Age Legends during an earnings call earlier this summer as a successful “digital service,” and told investors they planned [...]

  4. Exclusive: Nexon Brings KartRider to Facebook says:

    [...] is an advergame first and a racing game second. At one point, it looked like EA might bring its Need for Speed franchise back to Facebook (in fact, it still might); but so far, there isn’t one racing game [...]

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