EA All Play's SVP and general manager Nick Earl claims the "market has spoken" on free-to-play, and explained that he has no plans to release any premium mobile games in 2013.

EA All Play is an EA label dedicated solely to digital games. All Play accounts for as much as 80 percent of EA Mobile's output.

"The market has spoken very loudly that [free-to-play is] the model they like," said Earl in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

"Even though there's some vocal minority that don't like it, ultimately the numbers would show that they and others all support the freemium model better."

Number crunching

"I think initially they were a little bit annoyed because the all-you-can-eat model makes sense for them," Earl explained.

"That's the kind of people they are. But at the end of the day, they're going to pay to eat, if that's their choice. And they're happy doing it."

The label's focus on F2P is unsurprising given the scale of its success with The Simpsons: Tapped Out. The title generated 26 percent of EA Mobile's Q3 2012 sales alone.

"At the end of the day you kind of have to look at real numbers. The old proverb, 'You can't please all the people all the time' is just so true," Earl concluded.

[source: GamesIndustry.biz]