Wireless Week's Mark Rockwell interviews Mitch Lasky, senior vice president at EA Mobile -- Lasky says wireless gaming companies need to use a multipronged strategy to get the most out of their content.

"We generate the vast majority of our revenues through our partnerships with carriers," Lasky says. "We also have direct-to-consumer offerings in place in various territories around the world. So we are set up to distribute our content through whatever platforms make the best economic sense."

Still, Lasky says direct-to-consumer distribution can be expensive, and carriers can present a key barrier to consumer access. "They can shut off your offering at will if you try to circumvent the walled garden," he says. "However, I think it's commercially inevitable that a traffic-based Internet model supplants the current transaction-based model."

Despite all the challenges, Lasky is optimistic about the future of wireless gaming. "After releasing mobile versions of the popular football game Madden 07 in August, his company is working to get a series of new games into the pipeline this fall," Rockwell writes. "EA Mobile is also moving to launch a mobile community application this fall."