Blizzard Hires PopCap Exec, World Domination Imminent

In a move that will threaten the productivity of the whole wide world, it seems that World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has hired former Xbox Live Arcade manager and PopCap vice president Greg Canessa and has placed him in an executive position in the company.

After managing the Xbox Live Arcade ever since the release of the Xbox 360 and up until a few years ago, Canessa left his mark on the service, making it one of the most popular parts of Xbox Live and ensuring that popular titles like Geometry Wars would reach the hardcore game market. After moving to PopCap, he took care of casual hits such as Peggle, which gained critical acclaim for its addictiveness and appeal to hardcore gamers.

Now, after seeing popular casual titles such as Bejeweled and Peggle come to World of Warcraft, it seems that Blizzard has taken notice of the importance of casual and fun games to more hardcore users and wants to start up a new division that will create such titles, in an effort to make players even more addicted to its properties, ranging from the very successful WoW to Diablo or StarCraft.

Whether this means that Blizzard will slowly begin to dominate the gaming industry with its partner Activision or that it will bully its way onto the casual gaming scene is still up for debate. The company hasn't commented on the move yet but will certainly need to clear some of these things up just so we'll know what to expect from the popular developer.

Until then though, you'd better start finishing up your work duties because when the addictiveness of Blizzard titles will meet casual-oriented games, the whole wide world might come to a standstill and cease any productivity.