EA making more money through Apple's iOS App Store than its own Origin service
Major games publisher Electronic Arts revealed this week that it makes more money from Apple's iOS App Store than any retail distributor, including Best Buy, GameStop, or even its own Origin digital download service.
EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore revealed that Apple was EA's biggest retail partner, as measured by sales, for the first time ever in the June quarter, according to VentureBeat. Some of the company's titles that have performed particularly well are The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Real Racing 3, and The Sims Freeplay.
In all, EA made $90 million from games available for smartphones and tablets. The company did not break down how much of that came from the iOS App Store, and how much was through Android or other platforms.
The company's Origin service offers digital downloads of games for both Mac and PC. It competes with Valve's Steam, as well as Apple's own Mac App Store.
The company also unveiled its new Frostbite Go game engine in May of this year, which it plans to use to bring enhanced graphics to Apple's iOS. Frostbite Go is a mobile version of EA's powerful game engine that's behind blockbuster series such as "Battlefield" and "Need for Speed."
EA's mobile success came as Apple itself saw its revenue from iTunes, the App Store and other services surge by 25 percent in the June quarter. Total revenue from Apple's iTunes Software and Services division was $3.9 billion.
Apple's success in the June quarter was so great that it nearly caught the record $4.1 billion brought in by iTunes in the preceding three-month period. Developers are also reaping the benefits, with $11 billion paid out since the inception of the App Store ? half of that over the last four months alone.
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the iOS App Store, as it debuted for the iPhone in 2008, and has since spread to include the iPad. There are currently more than 900,000 applications available on the App Store, 375,000 of which have been specifically designed for the larger iPad display.
A recent study found that the top applications on iOS earn 4.6 times more than their counterparts on Google Play, the official storefront for Android devices. Another recent survey found iPhone users pay an average of 19 cents per app, iPad owners pay 50 cents per app, and Android users pay just 6 cents per downloaded app.
EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore revealed that Apple was EA's biggest retail partner, as measured by sales, for the first time ever in the June quarter, according to VentureBeat. Some of the company's titles that have performed particularly well are The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Real Racing 3, and The Sims Freeplay.
In all, EA made $90 million from games available for smartphones and tablets. The company did not break down how much of that came from the iOS App Store, and how much was through Android or other platforms.
The company's Origin service offers digital downloads of games for both Mac and PC. It competes with Valve's Steam, as well as Apple's own Mac App Store.
The company also unveiled its new Frostbite Go game engine in May of this year, which it plans to use to bring enhanced graphics to Apple's iOS. Frostbite Go is a mobile version of EA's powerful game engine that's behind blockbuster series such as "Battlefield" and "Need for Speed."
EA's mobile success came as Apple itself saw its revenue from iTunes, the App Store and other services surge by 25 percent in the June quarter. Total revenue from Apple's iTunes Software and Services division was $3.9 billion.
Apple's success in the June quarter was so great that it nearly caught the record $4.1 billion brought in by iTunes in the preceding three-month period. Developers are also reaping the benefits, with $11 billion paid out since the inception of the App Store ? half of that over the last four months alone.
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the iOS App Store, as it debuted for the iPhone in 2008, and has since spread to include the iPad. There are currently more than 900,000 applications available on the App Store, 375,000 of which have been specifically designed for the larger iPad display.
A recent study found that the top applications on iOS earn 4.6 times more than their counterparts on Google Play, the official storefront for Android devices. Another recent survey found iPhone users pay an average of 19 cents per app, iPad owners pay 50 cents per app, and Android users pay just 6 cents per downloaded app.
Comments
That's because Origin is crappy, annoying to deal with, and no one actually likes it. The iOS App Store is basically the opposite.
Nintendo may soon go the way of Sega.
Quote:
Originally Posted by al_bundy
$90 million profit in a quarter is not bad considering the low dev costs. with the console games the costs to bring a game to market are A LOT higher
Origin is not for console games. It's a platform like Steam for Windows and OS X games. The costs you allude to for console games simply don't exist for its Origin platform to distribute its own games.
imagine when Apple will launch its Apple TV with game controller support and an app store. There business on ios will soar.
When Apple get serious on gaming the major players will port there class 1 games.
This continues to be nonsense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveN
Three business models. Google makes money by people advertising to try to get you to buy something. Apple makes money when you buy something through their store. Amazon breaks even by selling at cost trying to undercut everyone else. I get the first two from a business perspective. I don't get the Amazon model.
Apple makes its money on hardware. App Store revenues are a drop in the bucket in comparison. Their entire revenue from iTunes (which includes iBooks and the App Store) was only $3.9 billion which is eclipsed by what they get in revenue from iPhone and iPad hardware sales.
Amazon was born in the Internet boom period. It still has a boom business model: Give something away for free, and make money for investors by having the stock price go up.
It's $90m revenue:
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/2599750715x0x678664/c6ab90e5-0ba1-4c94-9ff8-2212591a33cb/Q1 FY14 - Script_FINAL.pdf
Total revenue was $495m for the quarter, $1.72b for the year. Their game downloads via Origin and possibly other services like Steam were $37m.
Their gross margin was 63.8% = $316m and operating expenses were $477m so they made a loss somewhere above $120m (they write it as $0.40 loss per share).
Their big titles make a lot of revenue when they come out but they take a lot of time and resources to make:
http://www.vg247.com/2011/10/27/ea-q2-net-sales-of-1-03-billion-reported-thanks-to-digital-and-sports-titles/
They've put the bigger franchises on iOS already:
[VIDEO]
but they need a bit more power to run them like the consoles, which the PowerVR 6 will sort out and the controllers coming out will help too. NVidia just recently showed their face demo that they originally ran on the Titan GPU running on their upcoming tablet hardware 'Logan':
[VIDEO]
I expect games to be a big focus of the 'S' model iOS device releases in September/October.
Amazon's business model:
1. Undercut prices
2. Dominate market share
3. ????
4. Profit
As a consumer, I love them.
The Ipad is really becoming a real cool gaming machine. Now we just have to wait for Age of Empires on IOS and I am never putting mine down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
This continues to be nonsense.
Not to mention that comment is completely irrelevant to the article. Would you say it's fair to flag these kinds of posts? They're essentially spam...
Duplicate... and for some reason really hard to edit, due to some weird behaviour from Internet Explorer...
Eh, I dunno. It's not really spam, and as long as it doesn't totally derail a thread, it's not anything else, either, other than a lie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
it's not anything else, either, other than a lie.
Proof it's a lie or it's just an opinion.
In my opinion, Nintendo will eventually have to port their games to iOS if they want to survive. It won't be any time soon as they are a big Japanese company so they are stubborn to change especially if it involves a US company but it will have to happen eventually.
They've already stated they will never do this, regardless of what it means for their properties.
And how many things has Apple said THEY would never do?