EA Mobile: Can the Giant Climb to the Top?

EA Mobile has grown into a slowly expanding billion-dollar business since 2015, yet it has not broken into the top 10 mobile publishers and underperforms its potential. Revenue rose over a third in 2016, and monthly downloads ran between 40 and 80 million, with roughly one billion downloads and similar revenue across the 18 months to 2017. However, growth slowed in 2017, downloads were set to fall for the first time, and the company launched no global free-to-play titles in the first half of the year. FIFA Mobile and PvZ Heroes disappointed. The analysis covers EA's global mobile portfolio from 2015 through 2017.

EA's portfolio is diversified, with Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes at only about 20% of revenue, compared with over 40% for top titles at King and Supercell. Applying a modified BCG matrix, the analysis recommends fixing design problems in the Question Marks, NBA Live and FIFA Mobile, and continuing to invest in the Stars, Star Wars and Madden. Underperforming Dogs such as PvZ Free, PvZ Heroes, and UFC Mobile should be monetized better or sunset. Cash Cows including Real Racing 3 (200M+ downloads), Plants vs. Zombies 2, Need for Speed: No Limits, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Sims FreePlay, and SimCity: BuildIt should be run as long-lived services. The Simpsons' fall from the top 20 to outside the top 100 after weak updates shows the cost of neglect, while Sims FreePlay and SimCity continue to grow.

EA's strengths are its IP, publishing skill, and global studio network. Its weaknesses are a console-style yearly-sequel mindset poorly suited to live operations, a lack of new 2017 releases, and a tendency to spread resources thin. FIFA Mobile and others rely on "copy-paste" design borrowed from Madden, and follow-ups like Sims Mobile risk cannibalizing Sims FreePlay. PopCap has fallen far short of its $1.3B 2011 purchase price, though embracing free-to-play could revive it, as it did for Rovio.

The central conclusion is that EA should prioritize growing existing hits into top-25 "everlasting" mainstays rather than chasing new blockbusters, since games two to five years old dominate the charts. Zynga's recent strategy offers a model, and Need for Speed's failure to outperform Real Racing, with both ceding the racing lead to CSR 2, shows the risk of new launches. To strengthen its pipeline, EA could move top talent to new games with backfill, acquire studios, or revive Chillingo for third-party publishing.