Tag Archives: Playfish

One-time Playfish vice president of global studios Jami Laes has taken up a new role at Angry Birds developer Rovio. GamesIndustry reports Laes has been appointed executive vice president of games, heading up the games division, and replacing former incumbent Petri Järvilehto, who is moving on. Both sides gave some typical press release quotes about how much they adore each other and how swimmingly they’re going to get on. Meanwhile, Playfish looks to have been broken up and absorbed by EA.

Although EA still isn’t keen to comment, it has made layoffs at at least one and probably two studios, with talk of a wider restructuring across its mobile and social divisions.

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The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society are all facing the chop, developer and publisher EA has confirmed. The company intends to close down all three games due to slumping player activity.

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Playfish development director Catharina Lavers Mallet has farewelled EA for a rival gig in social gaming.

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Playfish’s European GM John Earner has quit his role and left the company, according to reports. Earner, who was VP of product management when EA took over PlayFish in 2009, is said by Tech Crunch to be joining venture capitalist firm Accel Partners. The latest departure is numbered to be the tenth EA exec that has left the publisher in the past year, Develop has said.

A study suggests Playfish’s Facebook phenomenon The Sims Social is taking a slice of Zynga’s pie.

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Recent EA Digital initiatives – the Online Pass system and The Sims Social – have been successful for the mega-publisher.

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The Sims Social maintains its lead as the fastest growing game on Facebook, approaching a significant milestone.

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EA has announced The Sims Social as gone live after a public beta period, and already after only a week, the game has 4,859,046 monthly average users.

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The GDC Europe 2011 schedule has been expanded with newly announced presentations.

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EA’s social gaming arm, PlayFish, will shortly drop its platform currency in favour of Facebook credits.

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PlayFish is to close three of its social-network titles, citing unsustainable performance – despite attracting a total of 59,000 average daily users.

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Former EA Partners head David DeMartini has passed the torch on, as the label expands to enfold both Angry Birds publisher Chillingo and casual portal PlayFish.

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EA said overnight that it had America’s bestselling August game in Madden 11, with year-on-year sales up 5 percent across all formats.

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Speaking with the WSJ, Playfish president Kristian Segerstrale has said it’s working on a new social game based on a well known EA brand.

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EA recently let a bunch of people go. You may have heard about it. Hell, in all likelihood, you may even be one of those people, considering how many heads rolled off the chopping block. However, according to EA SVP and CFO Eric Brown, your sacrifice was not in vain. You fueled the future. Or something.

“It’s no coincidence that we simultaneously announced a cost reduction in connection with the acquisition of PlayFish, because that represents, in our mind, a very important shift to digital direct,” Brown said during the BMO Capital Markets 2009 Annual Digital Entertainment Conference in New York.

Brown also shed some light on the motivations behind EA’s hook-up with PlayFish.

“One of the things they do exceedingly well is make a game for viral distribution … [another is] the quality of the revenue model,” he explained, talking about PlayFish’s microtransaction-centric business model. “We bought them for their IP and their game design expertise.”

More at Gamasutra.

According to a report by Kotaku, EA has cut loose a fair bit of it’s staff today from some of it’s studios.

It comes as the publisher today bought social games firm Playfish for $300 million.

The studios affected include Tiburon and BlackBox, as well as Mythic and EA’s Redwood studio from their QA department.

We’ll leave EA an email, and see what they say.

EA has bought social games firm Playfish for $300 million.

It was bought with $275 million in cash, and $25 million in a equity retention arrangement. They will operate under the EA Interactive division.

“Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community, is seeing tremendous growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our participation in this space,” SVP and GM of EA Interactive Barry Cottle said.

“The industry is undergoing dramatic transformation and joining EA is the ideal opportunity for us to push forward our goals to lead in the social entertainment evolution on a faster and much larger scale,” said Playfish CEO and co-founder Kristian Segerstrale.

Find more over at Develop.

According to discussions set to take place during this month’s London Games Conference, with digital distribution “poised to outstrip traditional retail sales within three years,” 40 percent of the games industry is underprepared for the shift.

Speakers during the LGC will address the issue, along with Nick Parker of Parker Consulting, who believes that 2013 and 2014 will be the “likely dates for the next generation global launches” from Microsoft and Sony.

“For the first time ever, the games industry has a way of alleviating the pain that traditionally befalls it during generational decline, through online gaming in its many guises – it’s a genuinely exciting time for the industry and the London Games Conference is perfectly timed to discuss these opportunities,” commented Parker.

Speakers at the conference include Mark Gerhard from Jagex, Kristian Segerstrale from Playfish, Nick Pili from Sega, Pete Edwards from PlayStation Home and Neil Thompson from Xbox, along with an opening address from Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister for Culture.

PR is through the break. The event takes place at BAFTA on October 27.

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