Paying attention to the widespread adoption of mobile devices is turning out to be a good decision for the folks at Big Fish.
The Seattle-based gaming company, currently ranked No. 1 on our GeekWire 200 leaderboard, announced its 2013 earnings today and noted $266 million in gross revenue — good enough for the 11th consecutive year of growth.
Perhaps more interesting was that nearly half of that revenue came from mobile, a platform for which Big Fish has developed a bevy of free-to-play games.
In a press release, Big Fish founder and CEO Paul Thelen said that in 2013, the company successfully transitioned into a mobile free-to-play games company.
“Big Fish is the world’s largest producer of casual games, and we are one of the few companies with a legacy PC games business that has successfully transitioned to mobile devices and, due to a strong history in data analytics, quickly adapted to the rapidly growing free-to-play business model, all while maintaining robust revenue and profit growth,” said Thelen, a former Real Networks employee.
The record revenue in 2013 came despite Big Fish having to cut nine percent of its workforce in Seattle, in addition to the closure of its operations in Cork, Ireland and Vancouver, B.C. The company also pulled the plug on its cloud-based gaming business last year.
Big Fish said it plans to launch more than 20 new mobile free-to-play titles in 2014 — that’s up from three released in 2012, and five in 2013.
