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.
After 11 years, VGRT Gaming Podcast, nee “Technical Diversions (TD) Gaming Podcast”, has hit the magic 500th episode, with not only former co-host Paul Nowak joining in on the celebration, but 2Old2Play’s Derek Nolan and former co-host Dan Quick sending their congrats as well. Paul’s presence is the go-ahead to give TJ and Scott permission to razz Jonah to no end, while Parker Brother board games are compared. This week’s Gaming Flashback is World of Goo.
The news for this magical 500th episode includes:
Question of the Week: “If you were a classic Parker Brothers board game, which would you be?”
[Song: “The Field Of Cormallen” by David Arkenstone.]
The patience of PlayStation 3 owners is wearing thin as retailers are reporting a 200% increase in PlayStation 3 trade-ins, usually for Xbox 360 consoles, as well as sales slumps for PSN points cards and fewer multiplatform game sales for PS3.
“In the first week of downtime we did not really see any major change in sales or trades,” says one source, a store manager at a major UK retailer speaking on condition of anonymity. “However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.”
Another UK source has reported that the independent retailer had seen a “massive increase” in the volume of PS3s traded in in recent weeks, and has pegged the biggest trade-in demographic as “the hardcore online shooter crowd”, who are logically the group most likely to defect when their online gaming is wiped.
[This episode is unedited, so be prepared for some naughty language.]
This week has some stunning news items, causing an overstuffed, long episode, so big even Jordan’s wife chimes in, and Jonah and Paul argue hotly over the last item. The Gaming Flashback for this episode is Super Star Wars.
This week’s huge news:
Also some listener feedback, plus this week’s Question: “What was your Golden Era of videogaming?”
