EA: PC Becoming Largest Gaming Platform

From Tom's Hardware: Electronic Arts yesterday reported its quarterly results with net revenue of $860 million, down $267 million as compared with $1.13 billion for the prior year. Even with the dropping results, losses weren’t as bad. Net loss for the quarter was $42 million, as compared with a net loss of $94 million for the prior year.

According to Shacknews’ listen-in on the earnings call, EA has seen its digital direct revenue grow to $400 million in the last fiscal year, and digital game distribution nearly doubled in revenue year-over-year to $80 million.

With many gaming PCs being net-enabled--at least more so than gaming consoles--the computer gamer is seen as a big market for digital distribution.

"In terms of distribution, the way we look at a lot what's happening in the future is, we've got probably a billion PCs out there in the world," said EA CFO Eric Brown. "Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world, just not in a packaged-good product."

While the PC is a games platform that is constantly evolving with new GPUs and updated APIs, the console market is one that sees a full reboot every handful of years. EA CEO John Riccitiello said that he’s seeing the console lifecycle slow down a little bit, perhaps with this generation riding for longer than the usual four to five years.

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