JAMDAT Mobile
Encyclopedia
EA Mobile is an American
video game development
studio of the publisher
Electronic Arts
(EA).
The studio's primary business is producing games for mobile phone
s. It has also produced other entertainment-related software such as ringtone applications, as well as games for other platforms such as PDAs
and personal computer
s. EA Mobile produces games in a wide variety of genre
s, such as fighting games, puzzle
games, and sports titles. Their most well-known products to date include The Sims, Need For Speed, FIFA Soccer and Madden Football as well as a mobile conversion of the widely-known puzzle game Bejeweled
, a conversion for Pocket PC
of the PC game Worms World Party
and their NFL, NBA, and MLB -branded games, in addition to holding the license for the mobile version of Tetris
. They have relationships with all major North America
n wireless service carriers, such as Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular, as well as many minor North American and some major Europe
an and Asia
n carriers. They have offices in Los Angeles
, Montreal
, London
, Tokyo
, Hyderabad, Honolulu, Bucharest
and São Paulo
.
As a publishing company in the wireless video game industry, EA Mobile's primary service is linking game developers, who generally develop the games from idea to playable software, with wireless
telecommunications service providers or "carriers", who sell the games to their customers. To this end, they maintain strong relationships with major companies in both groups. In addition, they create, purchase, and maintain proprietary software libraries to aid developers with whom they have working relationships, a common practice among electronic game publishers. They also do the majority of the work regarding quality assurance
for their games.
In 2006 EA Mobile expanded its footprint by acquiring JAMDAT Mobile. JAMDAT was founded by Scott Lahman and Zack Norman, two ex-Activision
executives, and Austin Murray in March of 2000
. They were joined in November of that year by Mitch Lasky, who had also worked at Activision, who became the CEO
of JAMDAT. JAMDAT went public
in late 2004
.
On December 9, 2005, it was announced that JAMDAT was going to be purchased by Electronic Arts for US$
680 million. The acquisition occurred on February 14, 2006 and the JAMDAT name was retired.
As of November 21 2006, the Sepulveda Center or Jamdat building (Visible from the 405 Freeway
in West Los Angeles), sign has been removed from both sides of the building. KBS Realty purchased the property in June 2006, and will become the anchor tenant.
As of December 8 2006, EA Mobile LA has been relocated to the EA LA building in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California
. The same merger of offices happened in Montreal
, where Jamdat Montreal moved from its Old-Montreal location to new offices one floor above EA Montreal's studios located in Place Ville-Marie (Downtown Montreal).
On August 8, 2007, it was announced that Barry Cottle will join EA Mobile as the new Senior Vice President and General Manager.
On January 11, 2001, Electronic Arts
and PopCap Games
presented Bejeweled
but that was a URL.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
video game development
Video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...
studio of the publisher
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
(EA).
The studio's primary business is producing games for mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s. It has also produced other entertainment-related software such as ringtone applications, as well as games for other platforms such as PDAs
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
and personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s. EA Mobile produces games in a wide variety of genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
s, such as fighting games, puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
games, and sports titles. Their most well-known products to date include The Sims, Need For Speed, FIFA Soccer and Madden Football as well as a mobile conversion of the widely-known puzzle game Bejeweled
Bejeweled
Bejeweled is a puzzle game by PopCap Games, first developed for browsers in 2001. Three follow-ups to this game have been released. More than 75 million copies of Bejeweled have been sold, and the game has been downloaded more than 500 million times....
, a conversion for Pocket PC
Pocket PC
A Pocket PC is also known by Microsoft as a 'Windows Mobile Classic device'. It is a hardware specification for a handheld-sized computer, personal digital assistant , that runs the Microsoft 'Windows Mobile Classic' operating system...
of the PC game Worms World Party
Worms World Party
Worms World Party is an artillery game, which is a type of Turn-based strategy game. It was developed by Team17 as the seventh game in the Worms series, and was released in 2001...
and their NFL, NBA, and MLB -branded games, in addition to holding the license for the mobile version of Tetris
Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...
. They have relationships with all major North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n wireless service carriers, such as Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular, as well as many minor North American and some major Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
n carriers. They have offices in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Hyderabad, Honolulu, Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
.
As a publishing company in the wireless video game industry, EA Mobile's primary service is linking game developers, who generally develop the games from idea to playable software, with wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
telecommunications service providers or "carriers", who sell the games to their customers. To this end, they maintain strong relationships with major companies in both groups. In addition, they create, purchase, and maintain proprietary software libraries to aid developers with whom they have working relationships, a common practice among electronic game publishers. They also do the majority of the work regarding quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
for their games.
History
EA Mobile was founded in 2004 by a group of EA company veterans. The group was formed/led by John Batter (General Manager) and included Linda Chaplin (head of US sales), Lincoln Wallen (CTO), John Burn (head of European sales), Jay Miller (US sales) and Mike McCabe (head of Asian sales). EA Mobile's initial focus was to change the mobile gaming experience from one that was generally regarded as shallow and low quality to immersive and high quality by leveraging the company's widely recognized franchises, design and development expertise and worldwide scale. EA Mobile launched the division and products simultaneously in the US, Europe and Asia.In 2006 EA Mobile expanded its footprint by acquiring JAMDAT Mobile. JAMDAT was founded by Scott Lahman and Zack Norman, two ex-Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
executives, and Austin Murray in March of 2000
2000 in video gaming
-Events:* May 11–13 — 6th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo ; the 3rd annual Game Critics Awards for the Best of E³* June 26 — International Game Developers Association renamed from Computer Game Developers Association...
. They were joined in November of that year by Mitch Lasky, who had also worked at Activision, who became the CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of JAMDAT. JAMDAT went public
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in late 2004
2004 in video gaming
-Events:*January 20 — Wireds Vaporware Awards gives its first "Lifetime Achievement Award" to recurring winner Duke Nukem Forever.*March 4 — Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Peter Molyneux into the AIAS Hall of Fame*March 22-26 — Game...
.
On December 9, 2005, it was announced that JAMDAT was going to be purchased by Electronic Arts for US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
680 million. The acquisition occurred on February 14, 2006 and the JAMDAT name was retired.
As of November 21 2006, the Sepulveda Center or Jamdat building (Visible from the 405 Freeway
Interstate 405 (California)
Interstate 405 is a major north–south Interstate Highway in Southern California. It is a bypass of Interstate 5, running along the western areas of the Greater Los Angeles Area from Irvine in the south to near San Fernando in the north...
in West Los Angeles), sign has been removed from both sides of the building. KBS Realty purchased the property in June 2006, and will become the anchor tenant.
As of December 8 2006, EA Mobile LA has been relocated to the EA LA building in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California
Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California
Playa Vista is a neighborhood located located on in the northern section of Westchester in the western area of Los Angeles, California, north of LAX...
. The same merger of offices happened in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, where Jamdat Montreal moved from its Old-Montreal location to new offices one floor above EA Montreal's studios located in Place Ville-Marie (Downtown Montreal).
On August 8, 2007, it was announced that Barry Cottle will join EA Mobile as the new Senior Vice President and General Manager.
On January 11, 2001, Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
and PopCap Games
PopCap Games
PopCap Games is an American video game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs about 400 people...
presented Bejeweled
Bejeweled
Bejeweled is a puzzle game by PopCap Games, first developed for browsers in 2001. Three follow-ups to this game have been released. More than 75 million copies of Bejeweled have been sold, and the game has been downloaded more than 500 million times....
but that was a URL.
External links
- Official EA Mobile website
- MobileGamesDb Ratings - EA Mobile game ratings, game reviews, and awards