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 episode morphs from a discussion about abusive workplace practices to pharmaceutical company practices. Otherwise, it’s just a discussion about the games people play and the people who play them. Also, a bunch of pop culture discussion.
This week’s news includes:
The Question of the Week, “What games are you looking forward to this coming Summer?”
If you’re considering the Xbox 360 console, or plan to buy the Xbox 360 Arcade Edition for USD $279.99 please take pause, until the Xbox 360 20GB models dry up, you can now purchase them for USD $299.99. As Microsoft has bluntly stated, get them “while supplies last.”
We’re sure Microsoft is going to take a hit in Arcade sales while these supplies last, but that’s the sacrifice you make for drying up a console SKU and removing it from the market. So, while you can save $50.00 now, you’ll also be able to get a new 60GB model for the same price as the original Xbox 360 Preimum at USD $349.99.
You’ll still be able to purchase the Elite for its epic price of USD $449.99 if you really need the larger disk capacity (120GB). This is an official statement, leading up to E3, so we’ll have to see what Microsoft plans to announce at the event.
Will Sony respond to the price cut now that this is official? Probably not, as the Elite price is the same, the only concern Sony may have is the disk capacity comes closer to their high end console solution.
This weeks gaming podcast is a his and her podcast as Don is out sick. Oddly, the episode is shorter than normal, apparently we just didn’t have enough to rant about this week. We did cover some community responses, covered some game history and busted through some news articles including:
This week’s question of the week, would it bother you if EA started charging fees to play used games?
