14 DAY TRIAL // Peter Moore, the chief operations officer at Electronic Arts, has once again talked about the potential of digital distribution when compared to retail sales and sees a core transition taking place in the next few years.
The executive believes that, “There will come a point, whether it is two or three years from now, when we say. ‘We are doing more in digital media now than we are in physical media,’ and it’s clearly not far away. This fiscal year we have 41 social mobile and free-to-play games on the slate, and later in the year we might make announcements about more games coming.”
For the last 12 months, Electronic Arts has announced that it has created more than 1.3 billion dollars (1.05 billion Euro) from digitally distributed products, which is an increase of 55 percent when compared to the previous year-long period.
For the upcoming fiscal year, the company sees another increase in this value, to 1.7 billion dollars (1.38 billion Euro), which is still significantly lower than the 2.6 billion dollars (2.1 billion Euro) that is projected for the retail-focused part of the company.
Moore then goes on to say that, “Investors are starting to understand our strategy, are starting to see light at the end of tunnel, starting to see growth rates in the areas we have invested in and in the industry as a whole starting to attract attention again.”
The executive has also made it clear that Electronic Arts plans to push digitally distributed video games in the coming year without dropping the physical sales sector, as long as there is still a market for it.
Much of the growth is linked to Origin, the digital distribution service that EA introduced during 2011 in order to compete with the leading service in this market, Valve’s Steam.
Origin still trails when it comes to generated sales and overall install base.