Big Fish reels in bookings of €170m thanks to free-to-play mobile games

The world’s largest producer of casual games, Big Fish, has passed a landmark by distributing over 2bn games to PCs and mobile devices around the world since it was founded.

Big Fish offices in Cork handle the localisation of games as well as the high-end research and development of cloud gaming platforms.

The company continues to expand across platforms, driving growth for the tenth year in a row. The firm reported that it has bookings worth more than $220m (€170m) and that free-to-play mobile games were driving this growth.

The company’s new interactive cloud gaming service ‘Big Fish Unlimited’ is currently adding a new game every day to PCs and Android tablets and will be coming soon to internet-connected TVs, Windows 8 devices, and Wikipad.

Big Fish Founder and CEO, Paul Thelen, said the company had changed its business model from the sale of premium games to the free-to-play model.

“2012 was a successful year of transition for Big Fish. Mobile is our fastest growing platform and now accounts for 30% of total company bookings. A year ago we transitioned from a premium ‘games you own’ business model to providing more choices to our customers on how and where they want to play. More than half of our mobile bookings now come from a free-to-play business model,” he said.

The company has been very successful in making money out of its games, with the chief financial officer of Big Fish, Dave Stephenson, claiming that nearly all of the games’ titles have made money.

“Virtually every one of our 3000-plus PC and Mac games made money in 2012, and our consumer base continues to expand as they increasingly turn to us for great games to play on their iPhones, iPads, Kindles, and Android tablets and phones,” he said.