Electronic Arts once had the pole position in mobile games, particularly after it acquired Jamdat Mobile for $680 million in 2005 and got the rights to the mobile game version of Tetris. But in the age of smartphones, EA competes against rivals like Supercell, King, Machine Zone, Kabam, and GungHo Entertainment. These newcomers have dominated the mobile gaming charts, and EA hasn’t been able to keep up, even with a portfolio of more than 800 games.
Frank Gibeau
But the big game publisher’s financial results for third fiscal quarter show that the company has made strides in converting its business from premium sales to live services based on the free-to-play business model, said EA Mobile head Frank Gibeau in an interview with GamesBeat.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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