SAN FRANCISCO — The mobile and social arena has been categorized by some massive short-term successes, but few big brands.
According to John Riccitiello, former CEO of Electronic Arts, who was speaking today at Casual Connect in San Francisco, mobile companies are getting lucky. But they aren’t able to capitalize on the luck in future products.
Riccitiello said that he had two major observations regarding the current trends on the mobile platform.
“The first observation is, with the rarest exceptions, no one’s got more than two games in the top 50. Second thing that I’m noticing is that there’s almost nobody that’s ever put up a mobile game that lasts longer than a year in the top 50, and secondly there’s no one sequel that’s bigger than the first. What that leads me to believe is that I’m either going to get lucky twice, or I’m going to have to figure out an answer that’s vitally important for the health of the mobile business long-term, which is simply this: they need to build brands.”
Those remarks are interesting in light of the past success of EA-owned PopCap, which has built cross-platform franchises around brands such as Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies.
Meanwhile, King is currently sitting pretty with its mega-hit Candy Crush, but one of the major questions facing the company is how its business will fare in the long term as popularity of its hit app wanes. The company is going to need to spend a lot of energy attracting users to its other games, which haven’t caught on nearly as well.
“Will Candy Crush be around next summer after the fabled IPO, and still be doing a couple million dollars a day, or not?” Riccitiello asked.
In addition, Riccitiello sees a future of mobile gaming that puts the apps at the top in big money, with less popular apps only making enough to break even.
“It’s going to be a go big or stay home market, pretty quickly and stay that way,” Riccitiello said.
