EA mobile revenues overtake PSP and Wii

Electronic Arts has reported wireless games revenues of $47 million for the third quarter of this year a 24 per cent rise from Q3 last year.

To put that in perspective, wireless as a category generated more revenues for EA than DS ($43m in Q3), PSP ($36m), and Wii ($33m) during Q3. Both PSP and Wii were ahead of wireless in Q2 this year.

However, mobile is still around five per cent of EA's overall revenues, and you can bet that PSP, DS and Wii will all see sharp increases in Q4, leading up to Christmas.

The overtaking is likely to be temporary, in other words, although it does show that mobile is providing a more stable spread of revenues over the course of the year, compared to console's traditional Christmas spike.

In EA's conference call following the results announcement, COO and president of global publishing John Pleasants said that wireless is on track to generate more than $185 million in revenues in EA's current financial year, which lasts until the end of March.

EA's overall revenues for Q3 were $894 million a rise of 40 per cent year-on-year but the company posted Q3 net losses of $310 million, compared to a net loss of $195 million in Q3 2007.

The publisher has also announced plans to lay off six per cent of its workforce around 540 people in order to make pre-tax cost savings of around $50 million. It remains to be seen how (if at all) these cuts will affect the mobile division.