Electronic Arts Predicts the Death of the Apple Store

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has been interested in developing experiences for smartphones lately, but it seems that the company is no longer too optimistic when it comes to selling its titles through the Apple-powered store for the iOS devices.

Richard Hilleman, who is the chief creative director working at Electronic Arts, has told MCV that, “Our current experience is that the App Store model is essentially in freefall.”

The executive believes that main reason is “that increasingly people in that context need to pay in-game versus out of the game” and added that “The good news is that our experience with DLC has been that if we do those strategies successfully, that we get payment rates that are far superior to almost everybody else in the online commerce space.”

As the smartphone gaming market has increased its value, Electronic Arts has seen it as a new way leveraging its brands and has launched a number of games on it and also on the rival Android-powered devices.

The company has been increasing its presence in the casual and mobile gaming market, which overlap at times, by acquiring Playfish during 2009 and also made a bigger move last week when it announced that it would be buying developer PopCap Games.

Electronic Arts has said that PopCap titles, like Zuma, Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombie, will be launched on a variety of new platforms and will be used to bring into the world of gaming those smartphone users that might not be otherwise interested.

Video game publishers have long seen smartphone gaming as a threat because of the low price of titles launched and the need to create experiences that can be played in chunks when the player is free to use his device.

We might soon see titles launched by Electronic Arts that are completely free to download and play for a while and then prompt the player to pay for more levels or for more game options.