Tech Cruch is reporting that Electronic Arts is about to acquire casual games giant Popcap Games for a cool $1 billion, which would exceed EA’s market cap by over 13%. If true, this would be EA’s definitive entry into the casual games market, a field they broke into 7 years ago.
Despite consuming a significant chunk of EA’s reserves. buying Popcap would bring them IPs such as Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies, Peggle, Zuma and Bookworm.
We’ll keep an eye on this deal as it happens.
[This episode was reposted due to being corrupted when the site went down.]
This episode is heavy on remasters and expansions, some bad, some good, some questionable. There’s even a sequel in there.
The news items include:
All this and listener feedback!
If you’ve ever been through an acquisition or merger you’d have expected this news to come, but for those new to the concept it’s simple: you can’t keep everyone. After a complete merger you end up with two sales departments, two IT departments, etc.
Do you really need them all? No, not really. You’ll need to keep some on board in order to “brain dump” your job onto others and hopefully stick around for the long hall. Some employees will probably be shuffled to other job responsibilities while some get packages and a thank you card.
These are some of the growing pains when working towards a successful merger, so don’t be surprised or start spreading rumors when a few people are let go. As someone who’s gone through it in two big mergers I can say that certain departments already know their fate ahead of time. Many IT and sales folk start looking for new jobs the minute the merger is announced.
E3 2023 has been officially canceled, and there’s speculation that E3 might be over — the guys have an idea how to fix it, however. Vampire Survivors wins Best Game at the BAFTA’s, an Easter Egg is found in Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Sony’s not having a good Spring.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
