The NPD Group released a new report today that calculated the amount of money Americans are spending on games from the nontraditional market. That includes a lot of digital content, such as subscriptions, digital downloads, social games and mobile games, but also used games and rentals.

In the third quarter, it found that the amount spent on that “other content” totaled $1.64 billion.

While significant, NPD said it wasn’t enough to offset lower revenue from the traditional game market. NPD defines the traditional market as packaged goods sold at retail. In the third quarter, that totaled $1.3 billion.

“New physical retail sales had a rough third quarter,” said Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD. “Increases in sales from some of these other monetization methods, and full game and add-on digital downloads in particular, only partially offset the decline see in the new physical retail channel.”

She said the overall market, including hardware, totaled $4.2 billion, down 11 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

For companies like Electronic Arts, which is investing heavily in mobile and social games and is placing big bets on online content, like today’s release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the results of these monthly and quarterly reports are unrepresentative of the trends they are seeing.

“Everything is growing. If you look at the total interactive business, it’s a $50 billion market internationally, and that’s up double digits. That’s where we play,” said EA’s President of Labels Frank Gibeau. “We find it frustrating because it doesn’t tell the whole picture.”

In the second quarter, EA’s digital revenue, which includes downloadable console content, mobile and social — was up 30 percent year over year.

Even a company like Activision, which has been slower to develop games on Facebook and mobile, said that during the second quarter, revenue from digital channels — mostly downloadable content — increased 27 percent year ove year, and accounted for 37 percent of the company’s total net revenue.

For all-digital companies, like Zynga, which went public last week to raise $1 billion, its impact hardly seems to register.

“I think that ultimately we are an interactive entertainment company, not a packaged goods company,” Gibeau said. “We are platform and channel agnostic. The physical channel is a great channel and it’s going to be around longer than people think. … We are fine with that model, but then, when you bring that game home, you should be able to connect to the larger online world.”

Motive

As the saying goes, people are motivated by either greed or fear. I think for many big companies, it’s more the latter. And Microsoft has a lot to be scared about.

If you poke behind its $71 billion in revenue and 39 percent operating margins, 30 percent of the goldmine comes from multiyear volume licensing agreements, which Microsoft calls Enterprise Agreements (EAs). According to industry analyst firm Forrester Research, “these profitable agreements bring in the kind of regular revenue preferred by financial-market analysts that monitor Microsoft’s performance.”

What motivates a customer to sign up for an Enterprise Agreement instead of simply buying Microsoft products, like Office, off the shelf? Well, historically, Microsoft pitched EAs as a way to ensure you can cover your workforce with Microsoft products at a discounted price level.

With companies investing in post-PC devices like smartphones and tablets, and evaluating alternatives to Microsoft productivity solutions, such as Google Apps or Salesforce.com, CIOs are starting to wonder whether renewing their EA is still a top priority.

In response to this threat, Microsoft is now pushing its Software Assurance (SA) licensing model, which allows customers to upgrade to newer products and also use its cloud services. The reason for the possible shift, Forrester says, is that “the twin revolutions of client mobility and cloud servers will kill device-based licensing, which is Microsoft’s existing model.”

So if Microsoft doesn’t embrace the cloud in a big way, the EA gravy train could come to an end.

Means

Apple is cool. Facebook is friendly. And Google isn’t evil. Yet look across a sea of computers in a typical company, and you’ll still see Microsoft everywhere.

And I’m not just talking about Windows. Microsoft has two key assets that will help it win the enterprise cloud:

• Office: While the Web and Web-based apps are fabulous for consuming content and even collaborating around it, Microsoft Office is still the standard in productivity to create corporate content. Love or hate those PowerPoint presentations, but they are still how most companies run. And for flexible analysis, Excel is unmatched. Heck, the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft (which is primarily Office for Mac) is a $350 million business on its own.
• Outlook/Exchange: For many workers, Microsoft Outlook (with Microsoft Exchange Server on the backend) is the first thing they boot up to start their workday, and the program they remain in all day long. According to industry analyst firm Radicati, 301 million corporate mailboxes used Outlook in 2010. Indeed, some companies have switched from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange to Google Apps and back, because users are too addicted to the interface and functionality of Microsoft Outlook.

So Microsoft still owns two of the key ways “knowledge workers” work with knowledge.

Opportunity

Microsoft isn’t working from a standing start. It actually jumped into the cloud relatively early in 2008 with its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), a hosted platform for collaboration. While BPOS suffered from many challenges, mainly because it was based on a platform that wasn’t designed for the cloud, Microsoft made it clear several years ago that they are “all in” as a company in the cloud.

This year, after many delays and much anticipation, Microsoft finally announced its first platform built for the cloud, Office 365. The new version of Exchange is finally on par with its on-premise alternative. Microsoft SharePoint Online is now flexible enough to meet many enterprise use cases. And Microsoft Lync Online, a real-time chat and videoconferencing system, could be a game changer for company productivity.

In parallel, Microsoft is working away on Windows 8, its big bet on the tablet revolution. With all of Microsoft’s failed past attempts at mobility and tablets, some level of cynicism is expected. But some believe Microsoft’s conviction is real. If Microsoft even gets it 80 percent right on tablets, they will likely win in enterprises that are used to the manageability of Windows, and will be attracted to the inevitably deeper Office integration.

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong: The innovation in the cloud is coming from all over, mainly from start-ups. For many of these start-ups and other non-enterprise organizations, a non-Microsoft approach will likely be the winner. But for the millions of you working in corporate America, Microsoft is probably the one bringing the cloud to a desktop near you.

Nick Mehta is CEO of LiveOffice and has served in senior operating roles in the enterprise and consumer technology markets for much of his career. He spent more than five years at Symantec Corporation and Veritas Software Corporation (now Symantec), where he served as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Vault information archiving and discovery software business.

KlickNation, which has been developing free role-playing games on Facebook for the past two years, will join EA’s BioWare label to create a new social division called BioWare Social.

The unit will be based in Sacramento, but will work closely with some of EA’s existing employees in San Francisco. BioWare Social will be led by KlickNation’s CEO Mark Otero.

BioWare is best known for creating such role-playing hits as Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and is currently preparing to launch the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Prior to this acquisition, Electronic Arts had made two other significant purchases to bolster its social gaming business, acquiring PopCap for $750 million earlier this year; and Playfish for $400 million, back in 2009.

In comparison to the other acquisitions, the purchase of KlickNation is relatively small. The company’s biggest game on Facebook, Age of Champions, only registers 140,000 monthly active users, and Electronic Arts didn’t even bother disclosing the terms of the deal.

But right now the industry is in a talent war, with the leading social games company, Zynga, gobbling up many of the smaller social games studios across the country.

Electronic Arts is currently the second-largest game developer on Facebook after Zynga, with its most popular game, The Sims Social, attracting 30 million monthly active users.

Still, the Sims game has failed to top two of Zynga’s most popular games, CityVille and FarmVille.

Electronic Arts has made it abundantly clear that it intends to challenge Zynga’s dominance in social gaming. If successful, EA may have a chance to win back some of the attention Zynga has been stealing away from it.

It just may not happen fast enough. Zynga is heading out on its road show next week to convince investors to pony up for its initial public offering.

As part of its pitch, Zynga is seeking a $10 billion valuation in its IPO, according to Reuters; that would be higher than Electronic Arts’ current public valuation of $7.8 billion.

It is asking for a higher valuation despite Electronic Arts recording 10 times greater revenue, compared to Zynga, in the three-month period ended Sept. 30. Electronic Arts reported revenue of of $3.8 billion; Zynga reported revenue of $300 million.

Electronic Arts is taking its Battlefield 3 franchise head to head against Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which can only be called a match-up between two giants.

Millions in marketing dollars will be spilled and billions will be mined from consumers seeking to play realistic role-playing war games.

However, the first round has been won by Activision, which clearly had the upper hand going into it based on last year’s success of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Today, the company announced that the release on Tuesday shattered its own first-day sales records, leading them to declare that the game has become “the biggest entertainment launch ever.”

In all, Activision sold more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours at an estimated sell-through rate of more than $400 million. Last year, the company’s first-day revenues totaled $360 million, or roughly 5.6 million copies, on day one sales of the game’s predecessor Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Comparatively, Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3, which came out late last month, sold five million units during its first week of sales.

Analysts were bullish on Activision’s early results.

“We believe the MW3 Day 1 sell-thru is a positive datapoint, and the stock should react positively on the news,” said Citi’s Neil Doshi, who added that if Activision can hit sales of $1 billion in five weeks or less, the stock should jump once again.

Analyst Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee wrote in an note to investors that Activision’s runaway success could result in revenues of $700 million to $750 million in the first week alone.

While both games are heavy on the hardcore action and realistic shooting, the battle between EA and Activision is as real as it can get.

Electronic Arts is calling Battlefield 3 the largest and fastest-selling first-person shooter title in the company’s 25-year history.

Both companies will also be banking on making additional income from digital components. Activision has developed a standalone social network, called Call of Duty Elite, where players share video and create profiles for free. But the premium version, which includes competition for prizes, costs an additional $50.

Making the competition even more intense is that Activision and EA aren’t the only two battling for the hardcore players this holiday season.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is now available for preorder ahead of its release next week. PlayStation’s Uncharted 3 went on sale Nov. 1 and Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City was released on Oct. 18. Microsoft also published its own first-person shooter, Gears of War 3, back in September.

Activision’s shares fell 17 cents, or 1.3 percent, today to trade at $12.81 a share. Electronic Arts’ shares jumped 30 cents, or 1.3 percent to $23.87 a share.

Where before, Facebook users had to use their computers for most of their Facebook gaming and app needs, now they should be able to play and participate from almost any device with a Web browser. And they may get a better experience if it happens to be an Apple iOS device.

In fact, though this launch had been described as an affront to Apple, it’s really not — whenever possible, the new Facebook mobile versions will defer to Apple’s native platform and even its payments system.

A big reason why Facebook apps, especially games, didn’t work on phones was because iOS devices don’t support Flash. Facebook has helped a select set of developers — Audiovroom, Branchout, EA, Flixster, Gilt Groupe, Huffington Post, Moblyng, Storm8, Wooga and Zynga — create HTML5 versions of a selection of their apps and game titles that will work in mobile Web browsers.

But HTML5 still doesn’t offer the performance that many complex apps require, so if the developers have created native versions of their apps, they can also connect Facebook users directly to that native app.

So now, when a friend sends you an invitation to play Words With Friends and you view it on the Facebook app on your iPhone, you can click to play and be taken to the Words With Friends app. If you don’t have the app, you’ll be directed to Apple’s App Store. If you’re on an Android phone, you’ll be taken to an HTML5 version in your mobile Web browser.

The combined native and Web app experience is only available on iOS for now. On Android and other phones with Web browsers, users will default to the Web experience. Facebook CTO Bret Taylor told AllThingsD today that Facebook is also working on an update to its native Android application.

While many people will appreciate having a more consistent Facebook app experience, the byproduct of this launch is that it could be much easier for users to find new mobile apps through their friends. Mobile app discovery has been a huge challenge for developers, and social could help unlock that problem by showing people what apps their friends are using.

“We really hope that we can fill a gap in app discovery here,” Taylor said.

On the downside, there’s one place Facebook wasn’t able to negotiate a consistent experience for users: payments. This was a major sticking point in ongoing discussions with Apple, as I’d written last week.

Facebook Credits can’t be used to pay for virtual goods within native iOS apps or mobile Web apps running within a Facebook app on iOS. Instead, users will have to buy separate in-app currency through Apple’s own in-app payment system.

And this after Facebook just required all of its game developers to switch to exclusive use of Credits earlier this year.

“We realize there’s some inconsistency,” Taylor admitted. He wouldn’t say if Facebook gets a share of revenue for in-app purchases it refers to Apple.

As for the Facebook iPad app, it has been close to being released for over a year, according to people who have seen it and worked on it — though the app has changed in scope throughout. Today at 1 pm PT it will finally be available as part of a universal iOS update.

Along with the ability to use Facebook platform apps, the iPad version will feature “an immersive and full-screen photos experience,” plus new and speedy chat and messages interfaces, Taylor said.

All this is being released three weeks after Facebook held its major developer conference, a week after Apple unveiled its new iOS, and just a few days after iconic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died.

So why now for the mobile platform? “Honestly — because it’s done now,” Taylor said.

“The reason these [launches] are connected is about ease of use, which is particularly acute on something like a tablet,” he added. “We wanted our native apps to be as feature-complete as possible.”

Okay, but the new mobile versions — despite their focus on app discovery — don’t include Facebook’s new live Ticker, which is one of the main ways users can see their friends are engaging with various apps.

That’s true, but probably won’t be for long, Taylor said, attributing the lag time between Web and mobile features to the challenge of designing user interfaces on small screens.

As for Facebook’s relationship with Apple? “We have a good relationship with Apple and we’ve worked with them on all our iOS releases,” Taylor said.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

As of yesterday, EA became the second-largest social games company on Facebook, trailing behind Zynga, which is seeking $1 billion in an IPO.

EA’s rankings have been propped up by the recent launch of the Sims Social, which over the past week became the fastest-growing game on Facebook, and by its roughly billion-dollar acquisition of PopCap, which has Facebook titles such as Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz.

Electronic Arts jumped in the rankings yesterday after AppData, which tracks the performance of games on Facebook, started counting the performance of EA and PopCap together.

The company’s acquisition of PopCap closed last month.

Zynga’s lack of brand names might ultimately hurt the company in the long term, but so far it has been able to make its own hit titles, such as FarmVille, CityVille, Mafia Wars and Empires & Allies.

Its IPO appears to be on track, unlike another Wall Street darling, Groupon, which faces increasing scrutiny and potential delays. But ultimately, investors may want to know how the San Francisco company plans to respond to increasing competition from companies with access to big brand names.

Other brand names that have gained recent traction include the Smurfs & Co, which is the second-fastest growing Facebook game after the Sims; and Kabam, which is planning an upcoming game based on “The Godfather.”

EA initially got its footing in social through the purchase of Playfish, and over the past year it has used those resources to focus more on titles, such as the Sims and other recognizable names, like Monopoly, FIFA and Madden NFL.

As of yesterday, EA had 71.5 million monthly active users, a distinct second to Zynga, which has 275.5 million monthly active users, according to AppData. The next-largest social games company is Germany’s Wooga, which has 38.5 million monthly active users.

EA’s biggest title on Facebook is the Sims Social, which has almost 30 million monthly active users, or about 7.8 million players who return daily. At that size, the game compares to Zynga’s fourth-largest title, FarmVille, which has 35 million monthly users and eight million daily users. EA’s second-largest title is Bejeweled, a PopCap game, which gets nearly 10 million monthly users.

Of course, both companies are expecting social games to become a significant business down the road.

SuperData, a New York-based market intelligence firm, estimated in a report released last week that the North American social games market will grow 35 percent this year to reach $1.4 billion.

Facebook is a big part of that, but as the seventh largest developer on the platform, and with only 12 percent as many active monthly users as Zynga, it has a long way to go.

It believes the solution is leaning on its deep catalog of brands — something Zynga and many others can’t compete with. So far, it’s launched Monopoly Millionaires, FIFA Superstars and Scrabble.

The next one, officially launching today, is The Sims Social.

Sims Social is a brand with a lot of history. It’s been played by 140 million fans in 22 languages in 60 countries around the world. To date, it has been available on the PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Wii and mobile.

Electronic Arts originally unveiled the game at E3 in June. To put the social game in context, I wrote at the time:

One of the most anticipated launches of the year is EA’s Battlefield 3, which is expected to go head to head with the seemingly unstoppable Call of Duty franchise. But at the company’s eardrum-splitting press conference in downtown Los Angeles, it also showed off The Sims, which is reflective of a wider trend in the industry to embrace other platforms.

With the launch of Sims on Facebook, EA is promising that your social life will never be the same. Given the game has the potential to create some very awkward moments with your friends and partners, that’s hardly an overstatement.

Players will be presented with challenges, such as forming romantic relationships, flirting, joking and getting married. They can build dream homes, take showers together, or play pranks or achieve goals, such as having 10 girls in the hot tub at the same time.

At E3, I wrote: “Who needs Battlefield 3 when you can begin World War 3 among your friends?”

There’s no requirement to “marry” your real-life wife or husband, or boyfriend or girlfriend, which could cause all sorts of real-life sparks to fly. If you can imagine slapping your husband (or the other woman) after reading about his latest accomplishments in his news feed, don’t worry, you can do that in the game, too.

EA is hoping the high intensity situations will lead to explosive growth.

The game, which is available in five languages, was technically launched today, but has been around in beta for awhile. It won the 2011 Best Browser Game Award at Gamescom in Germany this week, and it topped this week’s list of fastest-growing games by daily active users, according to InsideSocialGames.com. It has roughly 1.45 million daily active users on Facebook, gaining 2,287 percent compared to last week.

Sims Social will be free to play and will monetize both through virtual goods and in-game advertising, such as items from Dr Pepper, Dunkin’ Donuts and Toyota that can provide extra boosts and benefits when players need them.

This is not the first time the company has brought the PC game and console title to the Internet, but last time it failed.

John Buchanan, VP of Marketing at EA Play, said it’s been more than five years since that experiment and that this time they put in the time and energy to build something that both Sims fans and newcomers can enjoy.

“It is an incredibly exciting time for us. You have the No. 1 PC franchise and the No. 1 social network. It’s really exciting. It’s a game that is going to revolutionize social gaming and the Sims,” he said.

To build this game, EA’s Play Label teamed up with Playfish, its social games division. This marks the first time for a massive collaboration between the two groups, said CJ Prober, VP of publishing at Playfish.

“We used everything that the Sims team knows about the game for the past 10 years, and what works and what the fans love, and Playfish brought everything it knows about social gaming. It was a truly collaborative effort.”

Prober said development doesn’t stop today. Up next will be a mobile component that will allow users to stay in touch with their Facebook experiences while on the go.

That’s a good idea. That way, you can get out of the hot tub quickly before you get into real hot water.

Zynga walked away empty-handed last month after bidding unsuccessfully for PopCap, which went to Electronic Arts.

So what’s next for the acquisition-hungry company?

What about an even tastier target: Rovio, the Finnish developer of the popular Angry Birds franchise.

It’s not just a fantasy game. Rumors have been circulating in the gaming world that the two companies have already engaged in talks. Zynga, as it always does, declined to comment about that speculation.

But, if you think about it, an acquisition or partnership makes an awful lot of sense.

Most importantly, the pair would form a global powerhouse that would have a huge and active audience of players on both mobile and social platforms. Zynga has roughly 148 million unique visitors on Facebook every month.

And Rovio’s Angry Birds has passed more than 250 million downloads in a completely mobile market with one single and very addictive game involving pissed-off birds attacking egg-greedy pigs.

As a recent piece on Rovio in The Wall Street Journal noted:

“There are now 120 million active monthly ‘Angry Birds’ game players, the company says. To compare this to another media property, there have been more than 25 million copies sold of the best-selling console game of the past year, ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops.’”

Rovio certainly wants more and has been extraordinarily vocal about its intentions of raising more money, and its goal of achieving one billion downloads.

While that potentially offers one billion reasons alone that Zynga should be interested, here’s five more on why such marriage might be a good match:

1. Adorable stuffed animals: Rovio has done a much better job at building a brand and entertainment franchise than Zynga. And it has spread its wings way beyond games and into other categories such as movies, books and toys.
2. Plenty of cash: Zynga has a lot of cash on its balance sheet and is getting closer to raising $1 billion more in an IPO. And it has the appetite for big buys, offering to buy PopCap for $1 billion in a failed bid.
3. Free-to-play: Both companies have embraced the “free-to-play” business model, where games are given away and then monetized by selling virtual goods or additional content to players.
4. Zynga’s risk factors: One of the San Francisco company’s known risk factors is its dependency on Facebook. Mobile would offer some diversity. Since its track record so far on phones and tablets has been questionable, Rovio would cover them on that front easily and give them much needed talent in the arena.
5. One-hit wonder: Rovio developed a long list of mediocre games before it came up with Angry Birds. It’s obviously a major hit, but does Rovio have what it takes to be an independent company, or does pairing up with another organization give it some wiggle room to continue experimenting?

And, to be fair, here’s one reason why such a pairing might never happen: Both Rovio’s and Zynga’s top management are well known for their stubborn and definitive personalities and, more to the point, not playing well with others.

Ironic, but — if you want to use an Angry Birds metaphor — it would not be easy to join two companies who both want all of the eggs for themselves.

The sponsorship is the first example of how EA expects to monetize demos of games going forward. The technology it built to do so is called EA Signal, which allows for advertising in demos, including the ability to insert videos of celebrity appearances and developer interviews or other tutorials into the game.

Brands and marketers can also conduct contests and sweepstakes inside games.

In the case of Madden NFL 12, EA is trying a little bit of everything the first time around. Along with the chance to win a car, the demo lets players watch videos and learn new elements of the game.

The videos feature Van Bernardino, who goes by the name “Prodigy” and is known in gaming circles for being a champion Madden NFL videogame player. In the video, he drives a Chevy Cruze down California’s coast to meet up with former New Orleans Saints halfback and Super Bowl champion Reggie Bush.

Together, Prodigy and Bush demonstrate how to play the game, and give specific instructions on how to run an “audible.” That’s when the quarterback decides to run a different play at the last minute and calls it out to his players.

If a player uses an audible to score a touchdown, he or she will receive a special code. The code must be entered on the Madden NFL 12 Facebook fan page for a chance to win a 2011 Chevy Cruze.

Most of EA’s big console releases have a demo, so this will only be the first of many brand partnerships.

Last year the Madden demo was played by more than two million gamers. Overall, EA says it reaches about 70 million users on both Xbox and PlayStation through its demos. That’s a sizeable audience.

“In the console environment, one of the great places to identify value is in the demo,” EA’s SVP Dave Madden said. “They are in a buying mode. It’s the right mind-set.”

The full version of Madden comes on Aug. 30, and the contest ends Sept. 30.

“If you look at the ridiculous acceleration of iPhone hardware and technology, trying to find a sweet spot for tech to make your mobile game,” Capps told IndustryGamers, “I mean, what would your mobile game look like in 2015? Who knows how fast that’s going to operate, but you can bet it’s going to be faster than an Xbox 360. I think that’s the real challenge for us now, rather than worrying about the difference between a couple consoles and some order of magnitude, whether 3X or 4X. It’s about how do we deal with iPhone 8. … If you watch where the gamers are going, that’s where they are. Your iPhone 8 will probably plug into your TV, or better yet, wirelessly connect to your television set to give you that big screen gaming experience with good sound. So really, what’s the point of those next-gen consoles? It’s a very interesting situation to be looking at. That’s what we’re starting to think about more … not how do we scale from some Nintendo platform to some other future console.”

An interesting observation, coming as it does on the heels of similar remarks from EA CEO John Riccitiello, who last week described the iPad as the company’s fastest growing platform.

The program, called EA Sports Season Ticket, had been expected for some time, but the company is officially announcing the details today.

For $25 a year, sports fans will be able to download complete versions of Madden NFL Football, NHL Hockey, FIFA Soccer, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and NCAA Football to their consoles and play them for three days until the game is on sale.

At that point, the users will have to pay full retail to continue playing the games, but will be able to continue their achievements in the game.

Other perks will include 20 percent discounts on downloadable extras, including accelerator packs and gear upgrades; free online content, such as the ability to create special teams for FIFA Soccer 12 (normally about $5); and membership recognition through recognition badges.

The subscription service, the first of its kind for Electronic Arts, will result in savings for hardcore players, but at the end of the day it is about giving players early access to the games.

“This is pretty groundbreaking,” said Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports. “We’ve been working on it for over a year now and we are finally ready.”

Market research revealed that far and away the thing people wanted most was early access and to “look at the game prior to the general population, and start getting the controls down,” Moore said. “It’s like they get to training camp three days early.”

EA Sports Season Ticket, which will be available on Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation, will kick off on Aug. 30 with the release of Madden.

The one hitch about this program is that EA will have to ensure that the three days of free access will talk the players into buying the game — not out of it.

“We have a new hardware platform and we’re putting out software every 90 days,” Riccitiello told IndustryGamers. “Our fastest growing platform is the iPad right now and that didn’t exist 18 months ago. … Consoles used to be 80 percent of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40 percent of the game industry.”

An interesting observation coming from the CEO of one of the biggest games publishers in the world. It seems that iOS and the devices that run it have indeed created pricing and customer migration pressure for the traditional gaming platforms whose proprietors initially dismissed them.

As Riccitiello observed during EA’s Wednesday earnings call: “Gone forever is the 4- to 5-year console cadence that gave developers ample time to invest and retool for the next big wave. Consider that just 18 months ago, there was no iPad, Google was just experimenting with Android and most big games were limited to a single revenue opportunity at launch. Consider that each of the major consoles now has a controller that encourages users to get off the couch and get into the action. On smartphones and tablets like the iPhone and iPad, the top paid apps are all games.”

Which is true, I suppose. That said, smartphones and tablets do seem to cater more to casual gamers than hardcore ones these days. But continuing enhancements in processing power and graphics and further hardware improvements should make them more appealing to the latter crowd in the future.

The videogame maker, which does not break out revenues for Playfish, the social games division it acquired two years ago, said revenues are starting to ramp, but that the number of users playing its games are flat or down.

In a response to a question about Playfish revenue, EA’s CEO John Ricitiello said during the company’s conference call today, “I would say it’s a one-win and one-loss situation, which we are trying to turn into a two-win category in the next six months. We have not seen the growth in DAUs (daily active users) that we would have liked to see with the last couple releases.”

The company said monthly active users from its social games totaled 32 million, which is far lower than the 52 million it registered in the year-ago period.

Some of that churn has to do with a change in Facebook’s policies that turned off the ability to market games to user’s friends, but even still, EA has been aggressive at rolling out new games, leveraging some of its core intellectual property, such as Monopoly and MLB Superstars.

“DAUs are flat,” Ricitiello said. “But we roughly doubled our revenues. We are moving revenue up sharply. That’s a good thing. … We’ve learned the right lessons around monetization.”

EA Sports President Peter Moore also joined the call today to talk about its three sports titles on Facebook, consisting of Madden, FIFA and World Series Superstars games. He said the average revenue among paying users for those titles has hit $56 in accumulated spending, which is higher than revenue the company receives from players on consoles.

However, Moore acknowledged that the percentage of paying users is in the low single digits.

While this information is not exactly earth-shattering, it provides a small look into the company’s business as it tries to evolve from shipping games in cellophane to pushing out titles to multiple digital platforms, spanning PC, social and mobile.

Plus, the company’s investments in social will grow as it integrates the acquisition of PopCap games into its business. Ricitiello said he sees complementary aspects of the two company’s businesses. While PopCap games has been better at gaining users on Facebook, EA has been better at monetizing them.

“We think there will be strong synergies with their IP,” he said.

Going forward, it will also be important to compare EA’s performance to Zynga, which has registered for an initial public offering.

But there’s not a lot of overlap in the way the two are reporting results. While Zynga discloses its revenues, it does not report how individual titles are performing or the average revenue per paying user. It also admits that a very small percentage of its users pay for items inside its games, but doesn’t provide an exact figure.

Here are two slides from EA’s financial presentation today that break down its digital revenue by platform and by type.

On the first slide, social games revenues are part of PC revenues (in red), which shows it was the fastest-growing segment during the first quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.

On the second slide, social revenues are part of the Free-to-Play category (in purple), which shows that it was also the fastest growing segment in the first quarter, jumping 32 percent over the same period a year earlier.