EA needs to increase its online presence in Asia.

Now that Warhammer Online has made such a splash in North America and Europe. EA is setting the stage to export it's art of WAR. According the Associate Press, EA is putting pressure on it's online games to help bolster their presence in Asia. From the AP:

"EA's main business in the West comes from packaged games software for consoles and personal computers, but online games are more popular in Asia, EA President for Asia Jon Niermann told The Associated Press."

Jon later says that income from Asia account for only six percent of the overall EA income. That is what really needs to increase. What is interesting to me is that EA uses a few different publishers in Asia, but is now using The9 for it's latest game "Need for Speed Undercover." If the company name The9 sounds familiar it is probably because they publish World of Warcraft in China. Conflicting stories point to the Blizzard-The9 partnership being on the rocks, so this may be a test run for bigger and better things between EA and The9.