Electronic Arts has been on a buying spree for the last few months – but its latest purchase was an absolutely essential one.
The publisher announced plans Monday to acquire Glu Mobile in a deal worth $2.1 billion. It’s a pairing that might not make sense at first. Why, after all, would the company behind Madden, Mass Effect, and Battlefield want a mobile gaming company best known for fare like Design Home, Diner Dash, and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood?
It comes down to a few things. First, EA desperately needed a mobile division. Despite several attempts to make an impact in the mobile space over the past 10 years or so, EA has never been especially successful. Activision’s buyout of Candy Crush Saga developer King five years ago set the company on a mobile path that has been hugely profitable. EA (and its investors) have been trying to find a way to emulate that.
Glu, of course, isn’t King. A game featuring Kim Kardashian doesn’t have the widespread appeal of Candy Crush. But it’s stupidly popular and is a cash machine. Last year, Glu had revenues of $540 million. And it has a healthy future with its own games, including Disney Sorcerer’s Arena.
By acquiring Glu, EA bypasses recruiting and staffing a team that gets how the mobile game audience works. It will add over 500 mobile developers and more than 15 live services that span a variety of genres. More importantly, it will gain knowledge in the casual sport and lifestyle genres – something that can be especially valuable as it tries to broaden the audience for FIFA, Madden, and NCAA Football.
“Our acquisition of Glu combines amazing teams and deeply engaging products to create a mobile games leader with proven expertise across many fast-growing genres,” said Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts. “Mobile continues to grow as the biggest gaming platform in the world, and with the addition of Glu’s games and talent, we’re doubling the size of our mobile business. With a deep IP portfolio and an expanding global audience, we’ll deliver more exciting experiences for our players and drive further growth for Electronic Arts.”
Glu also comes with a Major League Baseball deal via MLB Tap Sports Baseball. That not only broadens the potential for EA Sports, it gives the company a successful template for its franchises to follow.
EA isn’t a complete nonplayer in mobile, of course. It does have Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies among its catalog, both of which are standards. Neither, though, has a buzz about them these days. So the new thinking Glu provides could give the company fresh inroads to customers.
EA also just came a step closer to wrapping up its purchase of Codemasters, gaining the approval of that company’s shareholders. Very few of its franchises have solid mobile offerings – and while they don’t seem to be a fit for Glu’s area of specialty right now, it’s another avenue EA could explore at some point.
Glu and EA are an odd couple, yes. But they bring different players to the table, which is likely part of what made a purchase so appealing. EA has a good understanding of the core console and PC gamers with games like Battlefield. And it has a handle, at least, on casual gamers who flock to its sports titles (though there are certainly core players who devour those games).
It has zero presence, though, with the lifestyle audience – the people who play games like Design Home and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and would never consider themselves gamers, though they spend heavily on those titles and others like them. Glu has a lock on those. And, utilized properly, that could add significantly to the bottom line at EA.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.