Game developer Electronic Arts PopCap today released Solitaire Blitz for iOS, a fast-paced, competitive card game.

Solitaire Blitz, which released for Facebook last year (Read our review of the game here), currently has 483,055 daily active users on the social platform, according to estimates from our traffic tracking service AppData.

In Solitaire Blitz, users are tasked with matching cards to clear their decks of cards in 60 seconds. Users can also compete with friends and follow along with the game’s storyline.

“The touch-screen experience takes Solitaire Blitz to whole new level,” said Scott Willoughby, franchise director for Solitaire Blitz, in a statement. “Combined with everything else that makes this game so amazing, you end up with the best free solitaire game available for mobile devices.” “Existing fans and first-time users alike are going to love this new version, especially since they can now compete with friends for high scores on the go.”

The game is available now for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Gaming giant Electronic Arts, which has seen years of success on console, PC and handheld, is seeing more and more success in the burgeoning mobile games market. The company released the highly-anticipated driving game Real Racing 3 yesterday and will launch Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances soon for mobile.

Nick Earl, senior vice president and general manager of EA’s All Play label, recently spoke with Inside Mobile Apps about EA’s transition to free-to-play, its relationships with the mobile platforms (Apple and Google) and the core gamer market on tablet.

Inside Mobile Apps: What has EA learned so far from some of its freemium titles like The Simpson: Tapped Out and The Sims FreePlay?

Nick Earl, senior vice president and general manager of EA’s All Play label (pictured right): We’ve learned a lot. Top of the list is how open this model is in terms of the number of players and how big the audience can be when a game is free-to-play, even though there are a lot of opportunities if you’re willing to spend money inside these freemium games. Having [games] as this model means it’s completely open and free for millions to play on a daily basis. We’ve learned that we have to be able to support a large audience and that’s the infrastructure of the game. The operations has to be able to support large audiences and we’ve learned that on games like The Simpsons, for example, which now has now more than five million daily active users, and when we started it, we struggled. We rebuilt the infrastructure to support and maintain large audiences.

We’ve learned that the design of a free-to-play game is different from a premium game or console game where you pay upfront and get all you can eat. It requires a different style of design, that’s a core compulsion loop, that the user experience as well as the sinks where the game tends to monetize. You need to construct a game that’s going to work for the majority of people that are not going to pay at all but is still going to make sense for people who have the disposable income and desire to speed up and experience or get access to a premium item, and that doesn’t really upset the balance that exists for the entire community that are playing the game. There’s a real art to creating and designing these games.

IMA: With Real Racing 3 recently releasing, which is a free-to-play game, could you talk about the decision or the process of making the change from Real Racing 2′s premium model to the freemium model?

Earl: From the beginning, we made the decision, both EA and Firemonkeys to go freemium from the beginning for a couple of reasons. One, is that the market was moving and voting for going freemium, even though this it’s not supported by everyone because some people don’t like change. We acknowledge that and understand it. The vast majority like that there is no barrier to download a game and to start enjoying it and be a part of that community and experience. It’s clear to us that the way we we’re going to make this the most accessible and get the audience to appreciate what we believe to be a high-quality experience — free-to-play was the way to go. Secondly, we came up during the course of development with this unique, innovative multiplayer mode called Time-Shifted Multiplayer, which allows you to compete with your friends but do it in an asynchronous manner. Once we came up with that, we realized that this game is going to be more fun if there was a large audience. If there wasn’t a limit of people willing to spend $5 or $7 or $10 dollars on a game. We wanted to open it up and make it free. As we were developing, it was validating the decision to go freemium and that’s why we went all in at that point.

IMA: On the flip side, you still have premium titles in your portfolio on iOS and Android and you’ve seen some success with games that are premuium with a price upfront and in-app purchases as well, like Need for Speed: Most Wanted and FIFA Soccer 13. Is EA still seeing success with premium mobile games?

Earl: We have not made the decision to focus exclusively on premium. There’s a place for premium with in-app purchases — we call that “paymium” to make it more confusing. There’s a place for those games and we’ll continue to evaluate each game by a franchise by franchise or game by game basis to figure out what’s the optimal way to construct a game and construct a business model for that game. The majority of games are going to be freemium going forward unless something radical shifts inside the industry. I don’t see it departing from this model any time soon.

IMA: In EA’s last earnings call, the company mentioned again how much revenue The Simpsons: Tapped Out generated. Distimo recently put out a report, which showed EA at the top spot among all top grossing cross-app store publishers. With mobile development having better margins than console development, will EA be focusing more of its business on the mobile platform?

Earl: We can’t talk about our gross profits and gross margins from system to system, but what I would say is this — we are enormous believers in the mobile platform and we’re excited about the future. If you take a look at the numbers and the trajectory, there’s no argument against how fast these devices are being adopted. We’re seeing unbelievable activation rates on a daily basis. We saw enormous numbers over Christmas. We’re seeing a whole market spring up in front of us. We’re excited about mobile. There are potentially millions of people that will upgrade from feature phones to smartphones and tablets in the years ahead. So there’s just no denying that mobile is enormously exciting to this company. And, our goal is to make the greatest highest quality games we can in front as many people as possible.

With all of that said, the company is invested in the future of consoles, and now that there’s some announcements about the next gen, we’re excited about the possibilities there and we’re also big players in the PC business and have some big franchises like The Sims that make sense for the PC — both online and offline. We’re a large publisher that has the ability and the resources to go after multiple markets and find a way to tie these franchises, so that you can play and interact with them across any device at any time, anywhere. That’s the Holy Grail here — to have the ability to access a given franchise from multiple devices, and your data moves seamlessly across sessions. That’s something EA believes in.

IMA: We recently spoke with the developer working on Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, which will launch on mobile soon, featuring cross-platform play between mobile and PC. Will more EA games feature cross-platform play?

Earl: That’s something we’ll push toward. There’s a lot of intricacies around design. I don’t think you can necessarily stop playing on web and then pick up where you were on mobile, but I do think you can interact with it. I like to use FIFA as a good example of that. On your phone, you can act more like the manager and switch positions — who your players are on the starting eleven and later you can take that new roster and play a new game in all its 3D glory with your 5.1 surround sound on a beautiful HD screen. And then the next time you can open your iPad and look at all the stats that you generated from that game. We love the notion of having your data in the cloud and being able to interact with it no matter where you are and when. (more…)

Electronic Arts’ web-based game Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances is heading to mobile, featuring cross-platform play between the web-based and mobile versions. Senior producer Martin Löhlein of EA Phenomic filled us in on the massively-multiplayer strategy title’s gameplay, cross-platform capability and monetization hooks.

“Right from the start, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances was designed to work on both platforms,” he says. “The size of the bases, the amount of building that you have in bases, the size of the defense and of the attacks that you’re making were designed for the mobile screen.”

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, which has more than three million registered users on the web-based version (Click here to read our review of that version), is free-to-play and based loosely on the long-standing Command and Conquer franchise.

Löhlein, who’s been with the studio since 2003, has worked on other titles for the Ingelheim, Germany-based developer including the real-time strategy and role-playing game hybrid SpellForce franchise before the studio was acquired by EA in 2006, BattleForge, which mixes RTS gameplay with trading cards and web-based MMO strategy game Lord of Ultima.

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances isn’t reinventing the wheel for the more than decade-old free-to-play MMO strategy genre on PC, which includes the likes of Travian (2004), Evony (2009), OGame (2002) and Tribal Wars (2003). What separates Tiberium Alliances from the MMO strategy games of yesteryear is its design, which focuses on the mobile platform. Older free-to-play MMO strategy games for PC were focused on lengthy queues, which lasted for hours, even days, to complete a building or to attack an opponent and report back. In Tiberium Alliances, users can build, attack and upgrade instantly. Also, the game is more about thoughtfully setting up defenses and troops rather than click skills, which a game like Blizzard’s StarCraft II relies upon, Löhlein says.

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances for both web and mobile is the same exact game with all the same features. The only difference is the user-interface, which has been optimized for both platforms — touch for mobile and mouse and keyboard for web. Users can pick up where they left off on either the computer or mobile. All the monetization hooks are the same on both platforms and virtual currency is redeemable on both platforms. Löhlein says a large part of the code is the same on both platforms, which is mostly written in HTML5 and JavaScript.

“We think that HTML5 is the technology of the future,” Löhlein believes.

 Playing for the greater good

The core gameplay revolves around constructing a base, harvesting resources and building up an army to capture territory from AI-controlled enemies known as the The Forgotten, and other players. One core gameplay loop is all about a user optimizing their base for the maximum amount of resource output. The other core gameplay loop is combat. The game is set in a large, persistent world map in the shape of a circle, where random camps with NPC-controlled baddies spawn. Players then choose the optimal target to attack and set up an army using the least amount of resources. Combat is handled asynchronously. A player can’t change their base around during an attack by an opponent, but they can spectate the attack. Spectating a battle can be helpful, for example, if the player being attacked by an opponent has a second base, that player can counter-attack by sending troops to the opponent’s base. When a user defeats an enemy — either The Forgotten or a real player — the user is rewarded with resources used to level up or unlock new units.

Individual victories contribute to a player’s alliance, the game’s big multiplayer selling point. Basically, players join an alliance, which consist of up to 50 people, and compete with other alliances on a given server. Alliances battle each other for strategic positions, which give the alliance a bonus of some sort. Since the game world is a huge circle, every alliance is aimed at moving toward the center over time, where there’s an end-game challenge. The further alliances get to the center, the stronger enemies get, meaning strategic positions become more valuable. If an alliance defeats the end-game at the center of the map, that alliance wins the server, but other alliances can still continue playing to reach second place, third place and so on.

Striking a balance between players who monetize and don’t monetize

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliance’s monetizes in two way. First, players can increase their resource cap, which is helpful since the game limits the amount of resource packages that are produced by buildings. Users can also increase the cap to store Command Points, which are spent for attacking. Second, users can purchase extra supply crates that give them direct resources or Command Points, which allow the user to execute more attacks. The game utilizes EA’s premium currency known as Play4Free Funds for in-game purchasing. Löhlein tells us that EA Phenomic are trying to make sure that players can’t pay to win. The developer set a limit on the number of crates a player can use per session, so users can’t spend an infinite amount of money or time into the game to infinitely boost their army.

“If you’re willing to invest more time and be a little less flexible in when and how often you do your sessions, you are actually able to grind for those supply crates instead of buying them and still be able to keep up,” Löhlein says.

Currently, the game has soft-launched on the Canadian Apple App Store and it will release for iOS worldwide sometime in March. The game will also release for Android in the coming months.

Japan’s top grossing free-to-play mobile game Puzzle & Dragons for iOS and Android is estimated to generate between five billion yen ($54 million) to seven billion yen ($75.5 million) a month in the country, according to the Japanese press as translated by industry watcher and analyst Dr. Serkan Toto.

The estimated revenue range is based off a financial document for January 2013 that accompanied game company GungHo Online’s financial report for the 2012 fiscal year. According to the report for the fiscal year of 2012, the company saw sales grow 168.8 percent year-over-year to $280 million and operating profit increase 690.1 percent to $99 million.

In January 2013 alone, the company revealed that it saw sales of 8.5 billion yen ($92 million), a 1002.4 percent increase year-over-year. GungHo didn’t provide a platform or a specific game in its portfolio for the figures it saw last month, but that didn’t stop the Japanese press from publishing estimates about the amount of revenue Puzzle & Dragons contributed toward the $92 million GungHo saw in January 2013.

“There is absolutely no doubt in the industry over here that one game only — Puzzle & Dragons — is the main driver behind this growth,” Toto says on his blog.

The three Japanese outlets to publish estimates included Inside Games’ estimate of seven billion yen ($75.5 million), Projetista’s estimate of six billion yen ($64.6 million) and Popular Social App and Game Analysis Blog’s estimate of five billion yen ($54 million. The three estimates average out to $64.7 million, translating to about an average of $2 million in revenue per day from Puzzle & Dragons. In comparison, Finish developer Supercell was reported to be generating $1 million in gross revenue a day from two games — Hay Day and Clash of Clans. Also, Electronic Arts’ The Simpsons: Tapped Out pulled in $23 million in three months.

The puzzle and RPG hybridPuzzle & Dragons, which added moved from seven million to eight million registered users in 12 days, is a puzzle and RPG hybrid game which first launched in Japan for iPhone in February 2012 and in the U.S. in November 2012. In spite of this popularity in Japan, the game still has yet to find a sizable audience here in the States, though it’s already starting to see similar titles appear in North America like Renren’s new puzzle game Merlin’s Rage.

GungHo, known for hosting the servers for massively multiplayer online role-playing game Ragnarok Online, currently has a market cap of $2.9 billion, more than Zynga’s $2.5 billion and GREE’s $2.8 billion, but well below DeNA’s $3.6 billion market cap.

Inside Mobile Apps yesterday got a hands-on preview of Real Racing 3. We also spoke with Ptolemy Oberin, one of the game’s programmers and project lead at developer Firemonkeys, about the studio’s experience going free-to-play and the game’s Time-Shifted Multiplayer feature.

Real Racing 3 is the first game in the Real Racing franchise that’s developed by Firemonkeys, a studio consisting of developers Firemint and IronMonkey. In July 2012, Electronic Arts merged Firemint, the developer of the first two Real Racing titles, Flight Control and SPY mouse, with IronMonkey. Melbourne-based IronMonkey was purchased by EA in February 2010, and are known for bringing EA franchises to mobile as it did with Mass Effect Infiltrator, Dead Space and The Sims FreePlay. Firemint, a Melbourne-based studio as well, was acquired by EA in May 2011.

Modifications made to Real Racing 3

The most noticeable difference going from Real Racing 2 to the third installment is the graphics. Oberin tells us that Real Racing 3 is pushing about the same graphic fidelity seen in PlayStation 3 titles such as Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 5 and Xbox 360 games like Turn 10 Studios’ Forza Horizon. Oberin adds that Real Racing 3, which runs on Firemonkeys’ in-house engine Mint3D, is pushing around five to six times more polygons in the cars, and that the tracks have been upgraded graphically as well. Other graphical touches include full damage visibility on cars, multiple camera angles and real-time images on the mirrors in cockpit view.

The game is broken down into multiple series, each featuring various events. According to Oberin, who was the project lead for Flight Control Rocket and SPY mouse, there are about 900 events in total. There are 46 licensed cars in total from 12 car manufacturers including Audi, Bugatti, Ford and more. Control-wise, users steer the car by tilting a device side-to-side and braking by pressing the screen — the gas pedal is automatically pressed down.

The biggest change in Real Racing 3 is Time-Shifted Multiplayer (TSM). TSM records a real person’s skill level and attributes on EA’s servers. That data is then used to program the AI opponents in races. This works because every user that plays the game will have their driving data recorded. If a user integrates with Facebook or GameCenter, they can then asynchronously race versus AI opponent that are programmed by a user’s friends. Oberin says the cars are not just ghost racers, he described the AI driving the cars as an “AI doppelgänger.”  It should be noted that TSM isn’t a mode, it’s in every race. Real Racing 3′s TSM will also be platform agonistic, meaning players can compete against each other’s TSM AI-controlled driver whether they are on iOS or Android devices. (more…)

Electronic Arts non-GAAP mobile revenues from smartphones and tablets were up 20 percent quarter-over-quarter from $66 million to $79 million for Q3 2013, Chief Financial Office Blake Jorgensen said today in the company’s earnings call.

The Redwood City, Calif.-headquartered corporation’s total mobile revenues including handhelds was $99 million, up 19.3 percent from $83 million at the same time last year, and up 12.5 percent quarter-over-quarter from $88 million.

Overall, EA reported $321 million in digital revenue, up 17.2 percent from $274 million in Q3 2012.

The most notable mobile game for EA was The Simpsons: Tapped Out, which generated more than $23 million in digital net revenue for the quarter. EA also claimed it was the No. 1 publisher on iOS worldwide for 2012.

“The release of the Treehouse of Horror content was a key driver,” said President of Labels Frank Gibeau in the Q & A portion of the earnings call.

EA’s hit iOS titles Bejeweled Blitz as well as The Simpsons: Tapped Out will launch on Android this quarter, said Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore in the earnings call. Moore also revealed that driving simulator Real Racing 3 will launch on Feb. 28.

Head over to our sister site, Inside Social Games, for a full run down of EA’s Q3 2013 earnings report.

Electronic Arts’ non-GAAP mobile revenues grew 60 percent year-over-year to $89 million for Q2 2013. Of that, $66 million comes from smartphones and tablets, according to Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen.

Jorgensen said today during the company’s earnings call the growth on tablets can be attributed to the strong performance of FIFA World Class Soccer in the Japanese market, PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz and The Simpsons: Tapped Out, which has reached 17 million total downloads among other achievements.

Overall the company reported $314 million in non-GAAP digital revenue for the quarter, with mobile sales accounting for 28 percent of EA’s total digital revenues.

Mobile revenues were also up 12.6 percent quarter-over-quarter. In July the company reported it saw $79 million in non-GAAP mobile revenue for Q1 2013, $27 million from feature phones and $52 million from smartphones.

The company’s Origin service continued to grow on mobile. The service now boasts 13 million registered mobile users, up from 9 million last quarter.

Video game giant Electronic Arts’ Q2 2013 earnings report today revealed that The Simpsons: Tapped Out just reached a record-high 2.8 million daily active users after being No. 1 on the iOS top-grossing chart for the past four weeks.

EA says The Simpsons: Tapped Out also hit No. 1 in the App Store in 54 countries like the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, The Simpsons: Tapped Out is ranked today No. 2 on both the iPhone and iPad top grossing apps charts. The game has been the No. 1 top grossing app for iOS for a majority of October. Additionally  The Simpsons: Tapped Out was recently updated with Treehouse of Horror content, which has helped keep the title in its top spot all month long.

You can read our review of The Simpsons: Tapped Out here.

Electronic Arts today reported $711 million in revenue for its second fiscal quarter 2013, up 40 percent year-over-year. On a non-GAAP basis (generally accepted accounting principles) EA saw sales of $1.08 billion — in line with the company’s guidance of $1.05 billion to $1.1 billion. The company’s Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.15 was above its guidance of $0.07 to $0.12. GAAP loss per share was $(1.21).

GAAP net loss for the quarter was $(381) million, up from $(340) million in Q2 2012.

Wall Street predicted Electronic Arts’s revenues would grow 4.4 percent and earnings per share would grow 100 percent. The average estimate for revenue was $1.08 billion. The average EPS estimate was $0.10.

On a non-GAAP basis, EA’s smartphone and tablet revenue increased by 128 percent year-over-year to $66 million. As expected, the company’s feature phone revenue dropped by 12 percent. Overall, EA’s digital revenue for Q2 amounted to $314 million.

GAAP mobile net revenue for the quarter was $75 million. EA also reported that it currently has 42 million monthly active users across its catalogue of social games.

EA highlighted its success on mobile with the iOS game The Simpsons: Tapped Out, a top grossing iOS game for the last four weeks and the No. 1 app in 54 countries. The game also recently hit a record-high of 2.8 million active users.

“EA is performing well, once again beating street consensus in fiscal Q2,” said Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello. “We delivered yet another quarter of sharp digital growth, with digital revenue up 40 percent compared to the same period last year, reflecting our strength across multiple brands and channels.”

Developing.

Electronic Arts is closing its in-house developer PopCap’s Dublin office.

The shut down of the Dublin office results in 96 people losing their jobs. PopCap associate producer JP Vaughan confirmed the closure in a tweet this morning. According to Vaughan’s LinkedIn profile, PopCap Dublin was primarily responsible for working on the company’s mobile properties. His work experience lists includes working on iOS updates for Plants vs Zombies, Bejeweled and Peggle, the Android versions of Plants vs Zombies and Peggle, various Java games and an unreleased social title.

Last month, PopCap let go 50 employees across its North American branches and was performing an “exploratory consultation” to figure out whether the company could maintain its Dublin studio.

A statement sent to Inside Mobile Apps by a PopCap spokesperson read that the consultation period completed, resulting in PopCap deciding to close its Dublin office.

PopCap’s statement also read that the company has provided outplacement support for many of the employees, offering employment in other parts PopCap, at EA or new opportunities with technology partners in Ireland.

Although EA is cutting staff at PopCap, EA had recently announced its expansion to its European Customer Experience Center in Galway, Ireland, adding 300 new jobs with help from the Irish government’s Industrial Development Authority.

PopCap opened its international studio based in Dublin in early 2006.

The closure today happened only a year after EA acquired the casual games developer for $750 million.