EA Mobile is an American video game development studio of the publisher Electronic Arts (EA).
The studio's primary business is producing games for mobile phones. It has also produced other entertainment-related software such as ringtone applications, as well as games for other platforms such as PDAs and personal computers. EA Mobile produces games in a wide variety of genres, such as fighting games, puzzle games, and sports titles. Their most well-known products to date include The Sims, Need For Speed, FIFA Soccer and Madden Football as well as a mobile conversion of the widely-known puzzle game Bejeweled, a conversion for Pocket PC of the PC game Worms World Party and their NFL, NBA, and MLB -branded games, in addition to holding the license for the mobile version of Tetris. They have relationships with all major North American wireless service carriers, such as Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular, as well as many minor North American and some major European and Asian carriers. They have offices in Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Tokyo, Hyderabad, Honolulu and Bucharest.
As a publishing company in the wireless video game industry, EA Mobile's primary service is linking game developers, who generally develop the games from idea to playable software, with wireless telecommunications service providers or "carriers", who sell the games to their customers. To this end, they maintain strong relationships with major companies in both groups. In addition, they create, purchase, and maintain proprietary software libraries to aid developers with whom they have working relationships, a common practice among electronic game publishers. They also do the majority of the work regarding quality assurance for their games.
History
EA Mobile was founded in 2004 by a group of EA company veterans. The group was formed/led by John Batter (General Manager) and included Linda Chaplin (head of US sales), Lincoln Wallen (CTO), John Burn (head of European sales), Jay Miller (US sales) and Mike McCabe (head of Asian sales). EA Mobile's initial focus was to change the mobile gaming experience from one that was generally regarded as shallow and low quality to immersive and high quality by leveraging the company's widely recognized franchises, design and development expertise and worldwide scale. EA Mobile launched the division and products simultaneously in the US, Europe and Asia.
In 2006 EA Mobile expanded its footprint by acquiring JAMDAT Mobile. JAMDAT was founded by Scott Lahman and Zack Norman, two ex-Activision executives, and Austin Murray in March of 2000. They were joined in November of that year by Mitch Lasky, who had also worked at Activision, who became the CEO of JAMDAT. JAMDAT went public in late 2004.
On December 9, 2005, it was announced that JAMDAT was going to be purchased by Electronic Arts for US$ 680 million. The acquisition occurred on February 14, 2006 and the JAMDAT name was retired.
As of November 21, 2006, the Sepulveda Center or Jamdat building (Visible from the 405 Freeway in West Los Angeles), sign has been removed from both sides of the building. KBS Realty purchased the property in June 2006, and will become the anchor tenant.
As of December 8, 2006, EA Mobile LA has been relocated to the EA LA building in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California. The same merger of offices happened in Montreal, where Jamdat Montreal moved from its Old-Montreal location to new offices one floor above EA Montreal's studios located in Place Ville-Marie (Downtown Montreal).
On August 8, 2007, it was announced that Barry Cottle will join EA Mobile as the new Senior Vice President and General Manager.
On January 11, 2001, Electronic Arts and PopCap Games presented Bejeweled but that was a URL.
See also
- Gameloft
- Glu Mobile
- Sonic Boom, Inc.
External links
- Official EA Mobile website
- MobileGamesDb Ratings - EA Mobile game ratings, game reviews, and awards