EA Mobile is keen to launch its own mobile game subscription service in Europe, with the aim of attracting consumers who might not otherwise purchase games on their phones.

"The kind of subscription we are thinking about is that you'd subscribe to an EA channel, and you can download five games a month maybe, and the price for that might be similar to what you'd pay per download now," said EA Mobile's Javier Ferreira, talking this morning at an EA Mobile roundtable in London.

"We think we've got to broaden the business models that we're offering to consumers, to encourage more usage, and new users."

Isn't there a danger that European consumers view subscriptions with suspicion, following the past negative publicity around Jamster and other mobile content companies?

"We don't want to go down that subscription route of a very high priced subscription and a lack of transparency on the pricing," says Ferreira. "This is all about reducing the barriers to entry on the price."

EA Mobile is currently releasing 2-3 mobile games a month in Europe, so there's a question of whether it would need to increase production to make subscribers feel they're getting value for money. Ferreira thinks not though.

"Right now we're releasing 2-3 games a month consistently, and we've got a very extensive catalogue of titles in the market," he says. "I don't think it [a new subscription offering] will have a major impact on the number of titles that we launch."

One thing that's certainly not on the agenda is increasing EA Mobile's roadmap to Gameloft levels – its closest rival has a rumoured 80+ games on the way this year.

Ferreira says EA Mobile won't try to compete on quantity, even once any subscription service launches. "I don't want to comment too much on Gameloft's strategy, but it's certainly not our strategy," he says.

"We are very far from trying to release 80 games. The reason is that firstly, we want to focus our R&D expenditure on some of the more innovative things that are going to drive the market forward, rather than making what might be the same game with different brands on top. That's not doing much for the market."

Oof!

"Secondly, there's no need," he continues. "There are too many games in the market, and from a consumer perspective I don't think there's a need for so many games out there. It might be a sensible strategy from a revenue perspective, but I don't think it's necessarily a sensible strategy from a consumer perspective. Our focus has been on launching hits. We are focused on quality over volume."

For the full report of EA's roundtable, including Ferreira's views on iPhone, connected gaming, and Gameloft's claim to be the leading mobile games publisher, click here.