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Nokia Asha

Glenn Roland, Vice-President of New Platforms and OEMs at EA, told Conversations recently that mobile gaming was the fastest growing sector of the games industry.

Mobile gaming was ‘absolutely critical in EA’s digital transformation,’ he said. 

Helping to support this growth has been the partnership between EA and Nokia in the unique proposition that they offered to people with a Nokia Asha device.

Glenn Roland

The deal was that, if you’d bought a new Nokia Asha phone, then you could download, and keep forever, 40 great EA Games – for free!

Looking back on the relationship, which was signed at Nokia World in October 2011, Glenn is quick to pay tribute to the Nokia team who made it happen.

“Support from Nokia was instrumental in getting engaged with the local marketing teams in all the regions.  They helped ensure that we could really deliver this message to the end users so they understood what they were getting when they bought an Asha product,” says Glenn.

Above expectations

As for EA, the partnership gave the company access to hitherto relatively unexplored markets. So, did this ‘unique and compelling’ offer work?

“Oh my goodness. It worked above our expectations. We’ve seen huge success in many of the unexplored markets across Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.”

Some of the individual games that have proved incredibly popular with Asha owners all over the world include Need for Speed: The Run, Need for Speed Shift, Bejeweled, FIFA and Medal of Honor.

Looking ahead

However, Glenn remains tight-lipped about new games that are coming up for the Asha devices. Only revealing: 

“We do have a new slate of products that we’re working on but we’re not ready to announce those titles yet.”

Tetris

When we do hear any exciting news, we’ll be sure to bring it you here on Conversations.

For now though, we can celebrate a great first year of the unique and compelling offer that EA and Nokia were able to present to all Asha owners.

Success is never guaranteed, but Glenn says he was confident that this always had a good shot of working.

“We saw a huge opportunity to access a market that we were not accessing before and Nokia’s position in those markets is still one of incredible performance,” he says.

“You’ve been a great partner of EA’s, and we want to continue to encourage that strategic partnership and reach these new users all around the globe.”