EA acquires Playfish in bid to push for social gaming

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Justin

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EA is no stranger to the realm of online gaming, serving as a developer or publisher to some of the biggest online franchises around. They want to extend their influence in online gaming, focusing more on the "social" aspect, getting involved more in the development side and less on the publishing side of the growing portfolio that make up "social" games. To that end, they have acquired Playfish, a company that specializes in the development of many social games.

For $300 million in total assets, EA is taking charge of Playfish's entire library, which is already well-connected with social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone. As such, all of Playfish's software is based around those sites. With a claimed userbase exceeding 60 million people, EA believes it can use Playfish's existing infrastructure to expand the world of social gaming in general.

There's certainly room for improvement and growth in the social gaming world. It's not something that interferes with the realm of traditional console or PC gaming, and is currently composed of dozens of different developers, many of them independent. Hopefully EA's acquisition won't discourage those developers from continuing to push forward.

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I hope this means better games for us all, and better interface and social chat, competivity and the like.
 
I'd never even heard of Playfish so had to Google them. I see they put out flash-type games that are very popular on Facebook, Yahoo! etc. (shrugs) Not my cup of tea, but I know they are becoming wildly popular, particularly with kids and for the card games, a lot of senior adults.

However, as EA expands it's tentacles, I don't think it will be long before EA and Steam go head-to-head in a death match! ;)
 
Playfish is huge in Facebook, most of my friends play these games, since they are highly competitive and simple.
 
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