EA on Monday announced that it has agreed to a partnership with Live Gamer, a monetization platform for microtransactions.
The New York-based Live Gamer offers a seemingly indomitable array of payment strategies and 
gateways. In addition to the usual suspects, like virtual goods merchandising, analytics, and virtual item gifting, the monetization platform also provides support for fictional (earned in-game) currencies, item storefronts, and catalog management.
A vast breadth of options for monetization is, after all, no small part of the huge draw for businesses to the social gaming space. Making money might require more creativity from developers, but just one look at successful startups like Zynga and Gaia proves that profits can be found.
Electronic Arts, the video game developer and pioneer most famous for its highly successful franchises The Sims and Rock Band, assured its desire to move into the social gaming space back in November of last year, when the company acquired Playfish, a social gaming startup. When that deal was first announced, EA paid Playfish at least $275 million in cash and $25 million in equity retention arrangements, with another potential $100 million in cash waiting for Playfish owners if the studio reached certain performance milestones by the end of 2011.
With today’s announcement, it looks like EA finally means to get serious about making some of that money back. And they really shouldn’t have any trouble doing so.
By 2015, the virtual goods-based monetization model will grow to be an estimated $7 billion market, according to a DFC Intelligence report. The only alternative big moneymaker, advertising, isn’t as attractive to budding businesses in the social gaming space, likely because so much of the Web for the past few years has been founded on that same model. In virtual goods, social games have a trick all their own.
We contacted EA for more details about the deal and will update this story accordingly when a reply is received.
