Electronic Arts , publisher of the “FIFA 15” video games which need FIFA 15 Coins, posted better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue, helped by growth in digital revenue and strong sales of its sports titles.
Shares of the world’s second-largest video game publisher rose 3.9 percent to $50.30 in extended trading.
Consumers lapped up heavily discounted older generation version of consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 in the holiday season, which in turn boosted sales of EA’s game titles.
“We did not anticipate as a strong market as there was in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 market and there was some discounting I believe going on the marketplace in November and December,” Blake Jorgensen, EA’s chief financial officer, told Reuters.
That led to a 62 percent jump in EA’s games made for such consoles in the third quarter ended Dec. 31, while the other area of growth for the company was in sales of mobile phone games, which rose 26 percent.
EA has benefited by offering its popular PC and online games on mobile devices, a high-margin “freemium” model in which games are available for free, but are monetized via advertising or charging gamers for additional features.
Jorgensen expects “a lot of rapid growth” through the freemium model over the next three to four years.
EA has already made smartphone versions of its top-selling games FIFA, whose latest console and PC versions were the third and tenth most sold titles in the United States last year, according to NPD.
