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.
If you’ve ever been through an acquisition or merger you’d have expected this news to come, but for those new to the concept it’s simple: you can’t keep everyone. After a complete merger you end up with two sales departments, two IT departments, etc.
Do you really need them all? No, not really. You’ll need to keep some on board in order to “brain dump” your job onto others and hopefully stick around for the long hall. Some employees will probably be shuffled to other job responsibilities while some get packages and a thank you card.
These are some of the growing pains when working towards a successful merger, so don’t be surprised or start spreading rumors when a few people are let go. As someone who’s gone through it in two big mergers I can say that certain departments already know their fate ahead of time. Many IT and sales folk start looking for new jobs the minute the merger is announced.
In this episode of Gaming Podcast, Jonah states he got to see Wreck It Ralph, while Paul still can’t find a black Wii U. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the 2002 Gamecube launch title Super Mario Sunshine.
This week’s news includes:
All this and Reader Feedback, and the Question of the Week is, “Did you read many issues of Nintendo Power?”
This week’s episode not only has a Gaming Flashback, but a Gaming History as well. The Flashback looks at the hardware intensive PC game Crysis, while the Gaming History looks at one of the bigger crowdfunding fiascos, Starforge. Jonah also reminds viewers that the “mayo” in the Splatfest for Splatoon 2 probably wasn’t actually mayo.
This week’s news items include:
Question of the Week: “What two games would you like to see combined?”
