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.
Nobody is perfect. When it comes to creating an epic story arc, awesome pre-rendered movies and a fully fleshed campaign Blizzard has done well. Now, Blizzard speaks of Starcraft 2 and the world shuts their mouth and listens to each and every word. What’s the word?
A Trilogy.
We’re not talking about the Lord of The Rings style trilogy, but three games with full stories which all end with the gamer being satisfied at the closure, not cliffhangers.
The three standalone games will be (says GameStooge):
Gamers are probably thinking, “so, I can play multiplayer with only one race?” No! The campaign is split into three separete games, not the races and multiplayer features. Although, each title is sure to introduce something new to the game engine, Blizzard has said:
“Nothing changes for multiplayer or skirmish mode. All three races are fully implemented from the get go. Each campaign will feel like an epic story – not a cliffhanger into the next one. They will each have separate arcs that have a clear start, middle, end – and you will feel like you’ve really finished *something* at the end of each game. More content than we’d previously planned – many more Movies, Missions, etc.” (games.on.net)
From our perspective, it seems Blizzard is itching to release the multiplayer system to the world sooner than later, considering some countries use Starcraft as a professional league, but they don’t want to rush out fast to market campaigns just to satisfy this multiplayer desire.
Instead, they’re going to take their time, in usual Blizzard style, by releasing the game as they finish it… per races story. This should give us a less watered down storyline or having one or two races with a piss poor storyline while another has a kick ass storyline because it was done first.
End result? Multiplayer gamers will be happy in the end while those that play Starcraft for the story will need to wait for each game to be completed. We know Blizzards release schedule is “when it’s ready” so we can only imagine how long it will take to reach that third game in the trilogy.
This is the second attempt at Episode 631, as the previous episode had bad audio, and was boring to boot. This week’s episode features a lot of questionable content, as well as a Dark Souls Gaming Flashback.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
The next big Wii title will be Castlevania and it’s going to be a 3D fighting game. Stop laughing, it’s not a joke, it’s what Nintendo Power is saying. Picture Street Fighter but with classic Castlevania characters and lots of smashing and bashing for victory.
“GoNintendo’s report from the mag hints at appearances from characters like Simon Belmont and Alucard, the use of sub-weapons like holy water and boomerangs, and (surprise!) motion controls.” (kotaku)
This is a creative direction for Konami to take, given their very inexperienced with fighting style games. They could build a team of experienced fighting style game developers, but why? What’s wrong with a classic side-scrolling style game using the WiiWare system like Mega Man 9?
Hopefully, Konami can pull off this fighter in a world where people do not seem to be as enthusiastic about fighting games especially on a system with the graphical power of the Wii. Well, it is rumored to have “motion controls.”
I’d love to see a remake of Simons Quest.
