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 week’s podcast isn’t the best, but at least we tried, right? There’s a lot of chatter, and Scott gets really angry at people criticizing Star Wars.
This week’s news items includes:
This week’ Question of the Week: “When, if ever, will you be getting VR?”
Last year Popcap developed Peggle, a title which received 2007 casual game of the year and dozens of media and industry accolades. Now, Popcap has produced the next game in the Peggle series called Peggle Nights. If you’ve never played Peggle, you can read a full review of the game as it will apply to Peggle Nights as well.
It’s tough to think Popcap can improve upon a sleeper success but it just might be possible. Peggle Nights brings back the famous Peggle masters with their classic power-up moves and increases the master count by one with a new Squid Peggle master known as “Marina.” In this installment, you’ll experience another 60 newly designed levels with five stages per Peggle master, this time with a “dream world” theme.
Peggle Nights is as close to an expansion as you can get without directly calling it an expansion. At first glance, you’ll probably say to yourself “this is Peggle with new levels” and, for the most part, you’re on the right track. Popcap stuck to the magic that made the first title a hit, including the same characters, the same game play elements and the same addictive quality.
Our first impressions were a bit lack luster as we spent time looking for how the game differs from the original. Six or so stages into the the game it started to grab our attention much like the original title did, causing everything from addictive shakes and strong desires to continue playing. Peggle Nights matures the level design greatly, stages are crisp artwork backgrounds with many animated pegs and bricks which you’d only find in later tough stages in the original game.
Head over to CasualGamerChick.com to read the full review!
Read on for full press release details.
This week’s episode is short due to Jonah Falcon’s impending trip to San Francisco to cover a preview event of Company of Heroes 2, while Paul Nowak gets irritated at the complaints coming out of the Wii U launch.
The news items include:
The Question of the Week: “Do you play real-time strategy games. If so, what is your favorite. If not, why not?”
