EA Determing The Solution To The 99% Problem

Posted on August 30, 2007 - Filed Under Industry News |

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Casual games have been plagued by the 99% problem. The 99% problem is the problem of getting more than 1 out of 100 people to purchase the casual game. Only one person out of a hundred that download the trial versions of games will go on to purchase the game. The rest of the people just take advantage of the free trail and move on.

EA Logo Kathy Vrabeck, president of EA’s Casual Entertainment Group, is tasked with “fixing” the 99% problem for EA. EA has thrown more man power at casual games with their creation of the Casual Entertainment Group. There are multiple solutions to this problem, but you have to figure out which one works the best for you. EA tends to try the paid subscription model, which the currently do with pogo.com, micro transactions and ad-supported games.

“The good news is that, in casual gaming, there’s no costly physical distribution,” Vrabeck says. “Because it’s all virtual inventory, there’s a good profitability story here as long as you adjust your entire organizational model around that. That’s actually one of the reasons we created a different division for casual games — because it needs to be organized separately outside of the rest of the company and resourced differently.”

Thanks DePauw University

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