Electronic Arts announced plans to purchase PopCap for $650 million in cash today. Even though the news was expected by most social gaming analysts, the extent of the deal was left uncertain. Sources state that the final deal will be closed by the end of August.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
PopCap Games is in the final stage acquisition talks for a sum of whopping $1 billion by the gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA). EA is placing a huge bet in this deal with such an enormous price. The offer is worth over 13% of the gaming giant’s market capitilization. However, Some in the industry thinks that this deal will be a Hail Mary pass from EA to break into mobile and social gaming, areas where the company hasn’t consolidated its position as it has in the console arena.
My Empire, a Facebook game developed by Playfish, seems to not being too well. According to AllFacebook.com, My Empire went from 1.4 monthly active users on January 15th to 1.1 million on February 14th. Why is that?
EA is having a pre-valentine sale on 28 of its iPhone and iPad games. The sale will last for 48 hours, Feb 8 and 9, and is available to US gamers only. During these two days, iPhone and iPad users can buy any of the 28 games for a meager 99 cents each and save up to 86%.
EA’s mobile division reported a massive holiday season in 2010, thanks in large part to many of its games occupying top spots on iTunes App Store. EA games occupied 14 out of top 25 slots for iPhone, and 15 out of top 25 slots for the iPad. This total domination of charts propelled EA games to the No. 1 developer spot on the App Store in Q3 2010.
EA Games has entered into a co-development agreement with Japanese game developer Cave to make games for Japanese mobile social gaming market. Cave has been known in the western world for its Mushihimesama Bug Panic, a bullet hell iOS shooting game.
Think you have creativity? Enjoyed playing the Incredible Machine? Play a game that rewards you for being creative!
Blip.tv is jumping on the interactive video ad bandwagon with a new pre-roll ad unit that lets viewers click to download free game demos to their Xbox consoles. As online video is becoming more popular and more advanced so are online video ads, and innovation and interactivity are becoming increasingly important. Blip.tv is joining a variety of other ad networks and companies, such as Innovid who we interviewed earlier this week, in making video pre-roll ads more interesting and more engaging. Find out more after the jump.
Read more
A recent NetProspex report studied the social network activity and popularity of the employees within various large businesses in the United States and found that EA was the most social games company. The scores for each company were measured by looking at the number of major social network friend connections, Twitter followers and Tweets by each employee and summed up across the company. EA followed Microsoft, eBay and Disney in the ranking. The report also found some interesting statistics about business social network usage in general.
Read more
Electronic Arts is looking forward and betting on mobile and social gaming, and the timing couldn’t be better: the company posted its 11th consecutive loss, down $82 million for the quarter ending December 31st. Getting deep into the financials, the packaged goods games market has continued its decline quarter after quarter, and EA is predicting it will fall a further 3% in the coming year. These packaged goods are 80% of EA’s bottom line, and the change is hurting EA’s core business. At the same time, EA has been increasingly focused on mobile and web games, and with the purchase of Playfish, entered the realm of Social Gaming in a big way.
Read more
