EA’s Digital Distribution up 39% over Last Year

By Joey Davidson on February 2, 2011 in Gaming, Platform, Portable

EA has released their Q3 results, a gigantic document covering their successes, failures and near-future plans. From that document came some interesting figures regarding the digital distribution side of EA’s business model. The growth they’ve experience in the last year amounts to around 39% more profit. This comes from all the DLC extras, full retail titles and games from the mobile marketplace.

The publisher has reigned in $211 million in profit from the digital side of publication, while they’ve earned $1.1 billion on the packaged goods side. There’s certainly a big gap between the two mediums,but some of that must stem from the sheer profit margin that’s packed into selling a $60 item versus a $.99 item.

This says a lot about the company’s recent growth in the mobile marketplaces and their additional models surrounding the world of micro-transactions. First of all, EA spent a lot of the last fiscal year acquiring mobile development companies. That’s been a great source of profit.

But, a sign of huge growth on the console side of the spectrum comes from the surge in DLC profit from their flagship products. FIFA 11 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have enjoyed a lot more in the way of digital revenue than previous iterations. A lot of this is due to the amount of content rolling out for each title, and the different strategies they employ.

Bad Company 2 has seen 7 map packs and one expansion. FIFA 11 has a ton of microtransactions in place specifically designed to sap money from suckers a little at a time. The game is rife with small upgrades and card packs that could be unlocked with a little work, or bought for 50 cents. It seems some folks are buying.

While it’s obvious that the packaged goods side of publishing isn’t going anywhere, when digital publishing yields results like these it’s safe to assume that companies will give the field a bit more attention. EA has been a leader in DLC and the digital space, look for that to increase in the coming years.

[via All Things Digital]