14 DAY TRIAL // The big business news of the month when it comes to the video games market is the acquisition of PopCap by publisher Electronic Arts, with the value of the transaction set to reach 750 million dollars.
But the main executive of PopCap believes that the main benefit to his own company is represented by the buyers and the acquired developers think in the same way about video games.
Dave Roberts, who is the chief executive officer of PopCap, has stated, “One of the things I like about EA – and I don’t think this was true of them a few years ago – is that they care about games very passionately,” before adding, “Every indication is, that EA like us as we are. They’ve not really proven to be very good at making casual content, so there’s no reason why they’d want to mess with what we have here.”
The CEO also believes that being bought by Electronic Arts means that his team can think bigger than it does at the moment and can aim for better games and for wider distribution.
Roberts is aware of the fact that the publisher has been known to snap up independent developers, integrate them and then eliminate all their personality before shutting them down.
He says that four years ago EA was “arrogant” and did not care enough about the video games it was bringing to the market but that now the company is a very different beast.
The PopCap acquisition means that the company will be able to deliver its titles on more platforms than before while EA is on track to bring in more than 1 billion dollars from the digital segment for the first time.
At the moment, PopCap does not have any big new projects in development, but big announcements might arrive soon.