EA Acquires Bight Games

Today, EA took another step to expand our mobile and casual offerings by acquiring Bight Games, an independent mobile freemium game developer.

Bight is a proven player in the development of iOS games, with a particularly strong track record developing games offered to consumers under the freemium model. One of their most successful titles is Trade Nations, a perennial Top 50 grossing hit on iPhone and iPad since its launch late last year, and they recently brought it to Facebook as well. Their team is based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and will join our growing EAi team developing mobile games in Canada.

The freemium game model in mobile is here to stay, and it’s growing fast. With the proliferation of choice in games and lessons learned from other platforms, consumer expectations are changing from early days where pay-per-download games were the de facto standard. Freemium games give players the flexibility to control more of the game – how fast they progress, how much and how often they want to spend to enhance their experience. The Bight team will help us to bring more freemium games to our chart-topping lineup of mobile titles this year.

At EAi, many of us already know Bight as a partner – we have worked with their talented team to develop several of our successful mobile games to date. Bight deepens our expertise in one of the fastest-growing segments of mobile games at an important time. We look forward to having them join our team at EAi when the deal closes later this month.