Jul 28, 2011 09:13 GMT  ·  By

The iPad is Electronic Arts’ fastest growing platform for deploying games, according to the studio’s Chief Executive Officer, John Riccitiello.

Apple promoted the first iPad as a great gaming platform, but the original tablet is almost nothing like the iPad 2 in terms of performance.

The second-generation post-PC device from Apple brings to the table a dual core A5 chip, nine times the graphical output of the original, and the same 10-hour battery life, making it perfect for gaming on the go.

Riccitiello agrees, telling industrygamers.com:

"I would argue that one of the least interesting things about the games industry was that every 5 years you’d see a new console or platform from everybody at about the same time with about the same or similar upgrades or services. You’d sort of harvest it and then it’d cycle back.”

“We got used to it. It’s what seemed normal. But it’s not a particularly smart way to run an industry... bulges in technology investment followed by harvest.

And let’s be realistic. Consoles used to be 80% of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40% of the game industry, so what do we really have?

“I think that the pattern against which Nintendo is no longer resonating is over anyway,” he said.

“We have a new hardware platform and we’re putting out software every 90 days. Our fastest growing platform is the iPad right now and that didn’t exist 18 months ago,” Riccitiello revealed.

EA is not the only studio to be taken with the iPad’s performance.

In March, Epic Games’ Vice President Mark Rein said of the iPad 2, "It's fantastic for gaming, we saw nine times more graphical power, Unreal Engine 3 can already take advantage of every bit of that.”

After learning that Apple’s iPad 2 was going to have twice the memory, Rein immediately thought - “better texture detail.”

Throwing the dual core CPU into the mix, Rein concluded that “just the technical specs are phenomenal.”