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.
It’s now the US government’s turn to question Sony about its online security, which follows the UK government’s scrutiny into the company’s affairs.
In a letter addressed to PlayStation executive deputy Kaz Hirai, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade has prepared a list of questions related to the intrusion; the list can be downloaded from the New York Times here. The letter asks several questions that Sony has not disclosed to the public, such as:
The Subcommittee’s press release states:
“Given the amount and nature of personal information known to have been taken, the potential harm that could be caused if credit card information was also taken would be quite significant. The Subcommittee on Manufacturing, and Trade has a longstanding interest in consumer privacy, identity theft, and industry efforts to address threats posed by unauthorized access to consumers’ personal information resulting from a data breach.”
The Subcommittee is requiring a reply by no later than May 6, as part of a privacy driven effort “to protect consumer information.”
Meanwhile, Kaz Hirai will be holding a press conference tomorrow from Sony Japan, to address the PlayStation Network hacking crisis.
Jonah goes off on a virulent rant about NBA 2K20 and the decline of the series as a whole, while offering milder criticism of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. There’s no Gaming Flashbacks, but plenty of news.
The news items include:
Let us know what you think.
Square Enix, like many developers today, look to combine their efforts with like-minded individuals making video games for our industry. Recently they put out a bid to pickup Tecmo and expand their development archive to new heights by jumping into a few more genre’s without starting at the ground floor.
Tecmo, has decided to opt-out of the friendly bid for the company and has decided to persue a merger with KOEI instead. Square Enix could opt for a hostile take-over bid, much like we’ve seen occur to others in the industry but their smarter than that, Square Enix President Yoichi Wada went on record saying:
“If they truly dislike Square Enix, there is no point. All creators would leave the firm the moment the deal was done. It would be the equivalent of buying a building.” (reuters)
Although Tecmo hasn’t spit upon Square Enix and said they “hate” them, declining the take-over bid explains a lot about the direction Tecmo plans to go, and those plans don’t include Square Enix.
It would have been interesting to see what direction Square Enix would take with Tecmo. Perhaps Square Enix will look to another development company to bid on.
