The Age’s Screenplay recently caught up with the head of EA Mobile in the Asia Pacific region, Mike McCabe, in an interview that discusses the status of the mobile gaming market presently, the progress that has been made, and what the future holds for this medium.
Aussie developer Firemint was mentioned specifically for their successes on the mobile gaming platform, namely for Madden and Iron Monkey’s Fight Night, both of which EA published. When asked on the potential for growth in the Australian market, Mike had the following to say:
I think there's real potential for growth because it's not an industry that is tied to a specific geography. Our relationships have worked fantastically well on a remote basis, and we will continue to use developers in Australia.
The projects are also easier to manage and there's a greater volume of them. The investment that the industry makes for a next-gen title for a top quality title is upwards of $20 million now, that's something that's very difficult for a small development house to even get close to. Especially if they want to create their own IP. Then the costs of distribution and taking it into the market is a huge, huge investment.
So we're seeing small studios being able to enter the market and mobile games are giving them the ability to fund their own other projects as well. That's where DS is also great, it's enabled a lot of smaller developers to get back into that core IP creation, which is going to grow the business. It's all about creating new IP, the next new title that going to come along.
Catch the entire interview at the link.