Bejeweled Twist Boosts PopCap Profits

PopCap, a company that develops and publishes casual games, announces that retail sales for its PC game line up went up by 85.3% in 2008, even as it became one of the top twenty publishers in the United States.

During the fourth quarter of 2008, as the credit crunch hit the gaming industry hard, PopCap saw the biggest increase in revenue, mainly because the company released Bejeweled Twist, the latest game in its most known series. The NPD Group says that the title placed eight in the PC retail chart for the United States.

The biggest games for PopCap in 2008 were Bejeweled 2, Zuma, Amazing Adventures: The Lost Tomb and Mystery P.I.: The Lottery Ticket. All the titles on the list are easy to pick up and have a very flat learning curve. They are either match-3 variations or object hunting adventures accessible to even non gamers.

At the moment, PopCap is also trying to establish a clear presence in retail stores, in an effort to widen the recognition of its brand by making its products more visible. For now, there are 15 PopCap titles available in retail stores, compared to just ten at the end of 2007.

Dennis Ryan, who is vice president of Global Business Development, stated that “Our family-friendly casual games appeal to the broadest consumer audience - literally anyone over the age of five or six - making our products extremely reliable sellers at retail. We're excited to move forward in the new year as we expand our retail lineup to include world-class console titles.”

If the economic crisis deepens, it's pretty likely that a segment of gamers, who are looking for cheaper games that can still deliver an interactive experience in bite sized portions, might abandon the releases of bigger publishers and discover the wide variety of videogames PopCap has to offer. Expect even better financial results from the gaming company at the end of 2009.