14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for gamers: Greg Canessa, the Vice President of video game platforms at PopCap games and former General Manager of XBox Live Arcade, says - in a recent Wired interview - his role at PopCap will mainly be to help customize and adapt their games for multiple platforms, including the Apple TV.
PopCap is one of the leading casual game developers and has sold millions of copies of games such as Bejeweled, Feeding Frenzy, Heavy Weapon, Zuma and many others. Greg Canessa said he and those at PopCap have a 'history' together and when the offer was made it was just too good to pass down, so he left XBox Live Arcade.
"Adding multiplayer, new play modes, HD, customizing the user interface and display for Zune, ipod, Apple TV, Nintendo DS, PSP" are just a few of the tasks Canessa will be handling at PopCap. Considering the expected boost in the casual games market, Canessa's efforts to get the games out of PopCap's studio could only have a rewarding outcome.
So does this mean that Apple TV will soon become a Gaming Platform and Apple will finally enter the highly-competitive games market? Perhaps. All we know for sure is that game programmers were hired, Apple does develop games for the iPod (but they clearly stated they will not work on the Apple TV), Greg Canessa will dedicate his work at PopCap to customizing games for various platforms, including Apple TV so... let's put all the pieces together. Maybe soon gamers will have a real alternative to PCs and it will be based on Apple technology.