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 Gaming Podcast once again lacks Paul S. Nowak, which is a shame since the price for the Wii U has been released. Paul as the resident Nintendo representative would have been nice to have in the episode to give his views.
This week’s podcast includes the following news items:
We also announce the winner of the Borderlands 2 contest. This week’s Question of the Week, “What game(s) have you been playing this week?”
In an “unexpected” move, Ubisoft has opted to utilize the 1:1 accuracy of the Wii Motion Plus add-on device for the Wii remote in their next Red Steel sequel, currently called Red Steel 2. It may be most gamers consider this an unexpected move because they thought the series would be dead after the first launch title.
Red Steel was plagued with motion issues, making it a very unexceptable demonstration of the Wii control scheme. Luckily other titles arrived to show off how the controls were supposed to work; Ubisoft tried to make a hit FPS title using innovative control methods but came up a bit short.
This time, they’re hoping to redeem themselves by having the additional resolution of the new controller device, risking their reputation for a second time on Nintendo’s hardware.
“What was missing was the preciseness of the sabre,” Corre said of the first game, “and with this new device, I think it will change the experience.” (1up)
Although many gamers missed the first Red Steel experience because word about the horrid controls hit the streets quickly, this might be a chance to try the series one final time before giving up on it. In Ubisoft’s defense, the US market is very finicky about their first person shooters which helps explain higher reviews in Europe for the original title.
The games controls were tweaked after E3 2006 when people found it lack luster in performance and ability to mimick the users real moves when sword fighting. Ubisoft said it was because they received the Wii controller prototypes one month before the expo.
Will Ubisoft get the Wii Motion Plus in time to put out a highly polished game showing off Nintendo’s new hardware or will this be a second strike against the franchise? Only time will tell.
This week’s podcast was delayed in publishing thanks to the holiday week being more hectic than usual. However, better late than never, and there’s even some listener feedback included!
The news items include:
Let us know what you think.
