EA assimilates cell games provider Jamdat

by Christopher Grant { Dec 8th 2005 at 7:15PM }

The Associated Press is reporting that gaming industry giant ~~the Borg~~ Electronic Arts has just agreed to purchase Jamdat Mobile Inc. for approximately $680 million. This move gives EA an overnight strength in the lucrative mobile games business, estimated at over $1 billion a year. Jamdat was one of the largest mobile game providers with franchises like Tetris, Bejeweled, LOTR, and the superlative Doom RPG.

Is this another sign of growing industry consolidation, or will EA's acquisition help grow a nascent but exciting new market?

[Thanks, Brandon]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Matt @ Dec 18th 2005 9:13PM

Hmm. Let's see here "happy warm and fuzzy handshakes," "sharing of ideas and hostess cupcakes at lunch," "let's be bestest friends and hold pinkies"... um, yeah no, that would definitely be filed under archvile innovation-destroying uber-corporate consolidation.

Logan @ Dec 18th 2005 9:13PM

Personally I hate how EA is becoming bigger and bigger every day. All they do is rehash the same old crappy franchises. I don't want the biggest producer of boring sequel games to control the whole market.

Only EA game I ever enjoyed was Medal of Honor, but it suffered from the usual EA sequel stagnation. Too many games, too little innovation.

vc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:13PM

HUGE DEAL.

Iceduck @ Dec 18th 2005 9:13PM

As a small mobile game developer I'm not too thrilled about the trend of large publishers mass-producing poor branded games. The mobile gamer demographic generally tend to prefer names they know over original content which makes it hard to get carrier support unless your game is Walker Texas Ranger Yatzee. With that said it's nice to see that our niche is being taken seriously by the rest of the industy.