EA PopCap Deal Praised by Casual PublishersEA, earlier this week, acquired casual leader PopCap in a massive deal worth up to $1.3 billion. It's clearly good news for EA as it continues to seek digital domination, but how do other casual firms feel about this? As it turns out, they appear to be encouraged by the big news.
“We believe this is a good outcome for both PopCap and EA,” said Jeremy Lewis, president and chief executive officer of Big Fish Games. “And it’s another signpost pointing to the value and scarcity of differentiated, category leading casual game franchises.”
PlayFirst, another big competitor in the casual field, shared similar sentiments with us. "This acquisition validates that the big gaming companies need to be diversified across platforms and across target audience. PopCap brings a strong portfolio of casual games IP, and proven success in the new Facebook and smartphone-gaming environments," said Mari Baker, president and CEO of PlayFirst.
Indeed, diversification would appear to be the keyword in this. That's going to be a challenge for the current digital leader, Zynga, but that's certainly something that can be addressed with acquisitions as well. In fact, the word is that Zynga had attempted to purchase PopCap for a cool billion before EA came along. We wouldn't be surprised to see Zynga swoop in on one of the other major casual players in the future.
