PC Is the Fastest Growing Platform Today, EA Says

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has talked about his company’s efforts with regard to the PC platform and revealed that he believes it’s the fastest growing platform today, not because of retail sales but because of subscriptions, microtransactions and digital distribution.

The gaming industry today is evolving into all sorts of directions, with many companies still focusing on regular, retail business, while others, like Sony, embrace cloud gaming and other such things.

Electronic Arts is a firm believer in free-to-play titles on the PC platform, as it runs quite a lot of these experiences, and once again professed its love for the PC through the voice of its CEO, John Riccitiello.

The executive revealed in an interview with CNBC that retail sales figures, like those offered by the NPD group, aren’t accurate nowadays, emphasizing his thoughts with the current stage of the PC platform.

"Just five years ago people said that the PC game business was in a radical state of decline because NPD said it was down 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, year-in year-out,” Riccitiello said.

"The fastest growing platform for video games today is the PC," he added, "but it's growing through subscriptions, through micro transactions and through downloads. So publishers like us are able to grow because we're transforming the way we deliver products to the consumer."

Electronic Arts is one of the industry’s leaders in terms of free-to-play experiences and even confessed, through the voice of its Chief Operating Officer (COO) Peter Moore, that all future interactive experiences would be free and are going to base their profits on microtransactions.

The studio already has plenty of great online titles that are free to play, like Battlefield Play4Free or Need for Speed World, and is working on quite a few more, including Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes or the recently announced Ultima Forever.

Via: PC Is the Fastest Growing Platform Today, EA Says