- Thursday, 26 November 2009
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A high proportion of IT columnists are surprisingly overweight - Martin Veitch
EA spreads its online wings
ELECTRONIC ARTS announced today that it is turning to online games in order to boost its footprint and revenue in Asia.
Online games are more popular than packaged software in Asia so, while doing well in the tangible games sector in the West, EA wants to pull in Asia too by expanding in this way.
EA President for Asia Jon Niermann says the company hopes to increase its market share in this area by launching more online games - 12 editions of different online games are expected to roll by the close of 2008.
Online versions of FIFA, NBA Street and Warhammer Online are already available in the region, with Battlefield Heroes expected soon and Need for Speed, online by next year.
Niermann said that with Asia’s revenue bringing in only six percent, "it's nowhere where it needs to be. We need to get that growth significantly higher".
Niermann also explained its reach to the coveted China market as EA is launching FIFA with online gaming portal The9, which operates World of Warcraft in China, and NBA Street with game operators Tencent and T2CN.
The development doesn’t stop here though, EA is also creating games in Asia specificaly for the Asian market. µ
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The Asian market does like online games but they like to pirate the games instead of buying packaged software.

EA and other developers should of done this long time ago in the Asian market, its the only way to do anything about piracy in places like China and other Asian countries that don't care about IP.



Matt... how can you jump to the same conclusion as the guys in suits... are you forgetting the salaries there? Except the rich centers of their biggest cities, people there work for a few dollars salary.
i don't think they realize that in some countries 200$ is considered a normal salary, and verry few people get to 3-400, how are we supose to live if we buy 2 games a month spending the money that we worked for a half a month