Electronic Arts to Purchase Award-Winning PopCap Games

  • Videogame maker Electronic Arts announced this week it would acquire PopCap Games, maker of games like “Bejeweled,” “Zuma” and “Plants vs. Zombies.”
  • According to the deal, Electronic Arts is expected to pay $650 million in cash and $100 million in new shares.
  • EA has long been a dominant player in the console gaming market; this acquisition plans to strengthen its presence in mobile and causal gaming.
  • Mobile games, like those played on Android and iOS devices, are the fastest-growing segment of the gaming market.
  • “EA’s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries and more channels,” explained Electronic Arts chief exec John Riccitiello.

Murdoch Urged to Drop BSkyB Deal, Hacking Scandal Widens

  • UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg publicly urged News Corp. to drop its bid to acquire BSkyB, Britain’s largest satellite TV provider.
  • The announcement was delivered in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, which continues this week with allegations involving additional News Corp. publications, possible classified information regarding the royal family, bribery of police and other illegal methods to obtain information.
  • Murdoch’s decision to shut down News of the World apparently has not muted the public outcry.
  • A group of disgruntled News Corp. shareholders has reportedly filed a lawsuit alleging nepotism and accusing the company of governance failures.
  • BSkyB’s stock posted a 5.5 percent drop on the news.

News Corp. Scandal May Impact BSkyB Acquisition

  • New allegations have emerged that News of the World, a British paper owned by News Corp., illegally hacked into and tampered with the voicemails of crime victims, including a kidnapped 13-year-old girl.
  • The allegations arrive just as News Corp. was poised to acquire BSkyB, the largest pay TV service in Britain.
  • British regulators have yet to give final approval to the deal, which has already taken 13 months due to complicated regulatory hurdles.
  • It is unclear whether the growing scandal will affect its fate. However, Prime Minister David Cameron said the allegations are a “separate issue” from the regulatory process.

IBM Phase Change Memory Prototype: 100x Faster than Flash

  • Big Blue announced a potential breakthrough in digital storage, with the unveiling of a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) chip.
  • Though still an early prototype, the chip demonstrated impressive advances over Flash memory, including a 100x speed increase, and a hundred-fold increase in the number of read-write cycles the chip can handle.
  • The need for fast, reliable data storage is projected to increase exponentially in coming years, as more data moves into the cloud.
  • IBM predicts that this new technology will cause a “paradigm shift” in data storage in the next five years.

Zynga Going Public: Insiders Anticipate Value at $20 Billion

  • The Zynga Game Network, maker of online video games, is expected to file for its initial public stock offering this week.
  • The company’s games, including “Cityville” and “Farmville” are immensely popular on Facebook, with 270 million active users.
  • The stock sale is expected to value the company between $15 and $20 billion, making it one of the largest technology offerings since Google’s IPO in 2004.

Gaming Industry Wins in Supreme Court Battle over Violent Content

  • In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that a controversial 2005 California law, which would have made it a crime to sell extremely violent or inappropriate video games to minors, is unconstitutional.
  • The decision ends a court battle that has gone on for more than six years, while similar proposed laws have been struck down in other states.
  • Justice Antonin Scalia explained the law does not conform with the First Amendment: “The basic principles of freedom of speech…do not vary with a new and different communication medium.”