EA's Frank Gibeau on the digital future and refusing to green-light offline experiences

EA president Frank Gibeau speaks on the subject of EA's digital future.

Despite the industry's push into cloud gaming and digital-only titles, brick-and-mortar retailers are "extremely valuable" to EA, according to company president Frank Gibeau in an interview with Cloud Gaming Conference USA.

EA's focus on creating digital titles with the introduction of its Origin platform, as well as its push toward mobile and social titles, is described by Gibeau as part of the company's evolution to suit customer needs, and he believes traditional retailers are following in suit.

"Most of the traditional retailers have evolved their strong consumer relationships with websites that allow them to participate in digital games and services," he says.

Gibeau adds that he has not green-lit one game to be developed as a single-player experience; instead, EA will only develop titles that include online applications and digital services. The hybrid cloud model, he says, can also help to grow and cultivate EA's Play4Free titles, which allow users to play at no cost and make purchases in-game via microtransactions.

EA sees a future in interactive entertainment on television, he goes on to say, stating interactivity offers more value than linear entertainment.

"Recent history with phones suggests that anytime a CPU is added to a device, games are going to dominate the platform. Smart TVs represent another exponential leap in the audience size for games. If I was in the network television business, I would be very nervous about games on TV."

Gibeau is scheduled to speak today at the New York Games Conference in an interview with Magid Advisors president Mike Vorhaus at 10 a.m. ET.