Electronic Arts

The Federal Trade Commission granted an approval for video game maker Electronic Arts to purchase PopCap Games.

In a move to better position itself in a competitive social game market EA decided to enter into a deal estimated at up to $1.3 billion to acquire PopCap that owns licenses for such popular video games as "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies."

The FTC put the deal on a list of approved transactions. It issues the list several times a week.

A video game publishing leader Electronic Arts Inc announced its plans to acquire PopCap Games for $1.3 billion a move to compete with the social and casual game makers.

EA said it would pay about $650 million in cash and $100 million in common stock upfront for the maker of the popular video games "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies." EA could pay up to an additional $550 million if PopCap reaches certain performance targets in about two years.

EA's Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown said the deal would help EA better compete with Zynga.

Electronic Arts has entered into a five-year agreement with Facebook to accept Facebook Credits as the exclusive payment method for EA games on the social networking website.

Under the agreement, EA will receive the same 70 percent revenue share for Facebook Credits as is standard for all developers on Facebook.

Pet Society and Restaurant City from Playfish, a division of EA, are two of the most popular games on Facebook in terms of daily users. EA said its soccer and football games are also popular on Facebook.

Stocks fell in morning trading today after Alcoa disappointed Wall Street as it kicked off earnings season.
Overseas markets also mostly fell, reacting to China tightening its monetary policy and boosting bank reserve requirements, in addition to the worse-than-expected results from the world's biggest aluminum producer.
As one of the first companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index to report quarterly results, Alcoa's earnings are often seen as a barometer for how companies will fare.

In a move to further cut costs Electronic Arts has made a decision to shut down 25 of its game servers. Earlier in November the company cut 1500 jobs to save more money but the measure apparently turned insufficient. One game about to lose its servers is Madden 09 on all platforms.

Electronic Arts has announced that it has "made it easier for loyal gamers to buy their favorite EA SPORTS™ titles with the launch of the first-ever EA SPORTS branded prepaid debit card.

 Electronic Arts Inc is reducing the number of its game titles as the company wants to focus on improving and upgrading core franchises, says Chief Executive John Riccitiello.

At present time EA publishes over 50 titles and plans to cut that back to about 40 next fiscal year to focus on quality games. Riccitiello said he could see EA publishing even fewer titles going forward.

 Electronic Arts announced that its 15 year-old racing franchise Need For Speed has sold more than 100 million units across 15 different titles.

The first Need For Speed game was launched in 1994 and attracted much attention of the players due to its impressive visuals and licensed cars changing the way people play video games. Since that time the company released 14 iterations of the franchise across 14 different game platforms which all combined have now sold a staggering 100 million units.