Electronic Arts Opens Up Casual Gaming Studio in Texas

Electronic Arts is a big gaming company, with studios and departments for almost every niche of the game market. First there’s the EA Sports Division, which creates titles based on a lot of sports games – from American football to European soccer or basketball, nothing is left unexplored. Then there’s EA Black Box division, which is in charge of the famous arcade racing franchise Need For Speed. Not to mention the large number of independent developers that choose the big company to publish their games, the latest one being Mythic Entertainment and its very successful Warhammer Online MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).

EA decided to tackle the very big casual gaming market, and as such, in 2001 it acquired the casual gaming site Pogo, making it its own label. Now, in an effort to design new games to appeal to the large number of casual gamers, EA announced that it would open up a new studio in Austin, Texas, which would be in charge of developing games for its label.

The first task of the team is to create titles based on the Hasbro properties, like G.I. Joe or My Little Pony. The first project from the new studio will be entitled Pictureka! Museum Mayhem and it will launch on the Pogo website in November, scheduled to hit store shelves in early winter.

"We are thrilled to open a studio in Austin as there is such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable game development community," said Andrew Pedersen, Pogo general manager. "It’s great to be a part of that spirit and I feel privileged to be working with a team full of game makers who bring such tremendous talent and experience to the Pogo team."

In Austin, the developers will be neighbors with EA's BioWare studio, which has created very popular games like Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate. This move definitely makes a lot of sense, since the casual market hasn't really been exploited by EA and with the opening of this new studio, things are about to change. Until then, everyone can still relax and play one of the many free games from the Pogo website.