EA plays catch up

Holy smokes, the Wii is a profitable system to develop for. At least, that’s what EA is now claiming in the drive to become the number two Wii developer.

Via Joystiq:

Speaking during a financial results follow-up conference call, EA CEO Larry Probst discussed the publisher’s plans to increase support for Wii and DS. “Clearly Nintendo will always be number one on the Wii and Nintendo DS, but we think we have a realistic goal of being number two,” speculated Probst, who added that EA’s goal was to own 15-20% of the Nintendo platforms’ market share.

Currently, EA has 15 SKUs in development for Wii and DS, including the now ‘officially’ confirmed version of Spore for DS; as if Will’s word wasn’t good enough. No doubt most of these games will be the usual fare of EA annuals, but there are “several” original IPs in the mix.

This isn’t some ground breaking coup — EA will still make games for Sony and Microsoft obviously (well, maybe just for MS)– but it’s a good sign.