Discussing The PopCap Purchase By EA, And What It Means To Us Gamers
Something that’s really big in the industry news right now, is the big purchase of PopCap Games by EA. Just in case you haven’t been following the companies, I’ll set up a brief summary for you. EA got the mindset that they wanted to spend a ton of money, so they jumped in the market to purchase PopCap Games, the maker of Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled. All together, EA spent around $750 million to obtain the developer. Sure, this purchase means a lot of things, whether it be a difference of publishing rights, the possibility of EA influencing the company’s output of titles, and more. When it hits the grain, however, what does it mean to us as gamers?
On PopCap’s official blog, the company explains what the merger means to them:
“It means PopCap will join forces with one of the world’s largest game publishers, giving us access to many more resources and a greatly expanded global audience. It doesn’t mean that PopCap is going away or changing what we do or how we do it. On the contrary, PopCap’s creative culture is the main reason EA was interested in us. We’re not changing our focus from creating awesome casual games everyone can enjoy.”
According to a Wedbush Security employee, Michael Pachter, we learn that ultimately the winners in this purchase are the shareholders. Pachter explains the merger in comparison to when Facebook was purchased. When it was initially bought out it had 150 million subscribers, and now it’s at over 750 million. EA believes the same will happen with PopCap games, as so many enjoy their content now, and the number of those people will continue to grow exponentially, which in turn will make the company tons of money.
In the end, if you’re a fan of PopCap and their content, you don’t have anything to worry about. A lot of people don’t think EA will sink PopCap, and only good things are sought to come out of this merger. For more information on the merger and more opinions, you can head to G4’s post on the matter here. What we want to know, is what do you think? Does EA have the potential to sink PopCap as a company?
