In a recent interview, EA Executive Producer Travis Boatman spent quite a bit of time talking about mobile content distribution challenges. Boatman said EA is "doing all these great things with the products, but yet the method by which they're delivered to the consumer still isn't really evolving in the same way." I completely agree.
Boatman leaves most of the responsibility for distribution at the feet of the operators, but concedes that "there's going to be a growth in off-deck portals." Readers may recall that last month EA SVP Mitch Lasky appeared to be announcing a plan for EA to take it's games off-deck, before retracting his statements amid clearly more attention than Lasky intended.
As I said at the time, there's no reason that carriers should wield this much control over the distribution of mobile content. Even EA Mobile--which as Jamdat was an outspoken supporter of carrier portals--is eying off-deck revenue. It's only a matter of time. - Eli