14 DAY TRIAL // The leader of casual games developer PopCap, which counts games as Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled among its hits, believes that his company and other major players like Zynga, which is focused on Facebook games like FarmVille, and Rovio, the creator of Angry Birds, might develop to become multimedia-focused conglomerates that are similar to Disney.
John Vechey, who is the chief executive officer at PopCap Games, has stated, “I think that what's going to happen is, at some point we're going to see that gaming is just one aspect of what we do. Whether that's toys or movies or TV or some other medium, it's another way that customers gain appreciation for it.”
Vecey singled out the PlayStation Portable handheld from Sony and the new Nintendo 3DS as the platform which will face the biggest challenge from the rise of social games, mostly played on the Apple-made mobile devices and Android-powered phones.
He added, “I think the thing with portable gaming – and portable gaming devices – is they all have the same problem; the mobile phone. I don't carry my DS with me anymore when I go traveling. It just sits there until there's a game I absolutely have to play on it, which isn't available on any other platform.”
The PopCap Games CEO seems to be particularly interested in the iPad 2, saying that it has a lot of interesting features for casual games developers, especially the fact that local multiplayer connections are easy to set up and use.
PopCap has recently launched a new games label, called 4th & Battery, which is designed to allow its designers to experiment with weird concepts and quickly launch them on Apple devices, Android phones and on the PC.
Its first launch was Unpleasant Horse and other titles are expected to arrive shortly.