EA Says Recent PopCap Layoffs Show Shift to Mobile Games Focus

The recent lay-offs that have hit PopCap Games are apparently normal, according to a executive from Electronic Arts, and they show that the company is moving towards a new mobile focus while also creating more integration between the developer and the publisher.

Frank Gibeau, who leads the EA Labels division, has stated, “Typically at EA what we do when we acquire a company is we make sure that we go slow initially and really understand the culture of the company. And then we look for whether there’s opportunities to integrate the companies – and then we accelerate.”

He added, “So with PopCap, what we found is that there are some areas inside PopCap that were duplicative what EA was doing; a lot of central resources, legal, business affairs those types of things so we accelerated the integration there.”

Gibeau says that many of the layoffs were also designed to underline the move towards mobile games at PopCap, which has been so far mostly focusing on pure social experiences that arrived on a variety of platforms.

The executive says that mobile gaming is the fastest growing area of the video games business and it makes sense for Electronic Arts to use PopCap Games to exploit the opportunities that it is presented with.

The Electronic Arts representative also believes that the problems that Zynga is having are also linked with the move from social to mobile gaming and sees the company as a worthy rival in the near future.

Frank Gibeau has also addressed the issue of the next console generation from Microsoft and Sony and he believes that EA is well equipped to deal with the transition, with developer DICE the company that has the ability to deliver a high profile title during the launch window.

DICE has revealed that it was working on Battlefield 4 even as it is supporting the previous title in the series.