Pegging the future of casual games
More platforms
PopCap is steadily pursuing the mobile market to clinch our place as the leading provider of casual games for cell phones, iPod devices and other mobile units, which are perfect for bite-sized, on-the-go playtime. Bejeweled has been a top-5 mobile game for years throughout North America. Europe and Asia, both sources of huge wired populations, have equally enormous potential for expanding the casual games customer base.
We've got plans to bring our games to additional handheld devices, like the Game Boy Dual-Screen and PlayStation Portable. We're considering multiplayer games, taking some cues from the Asian market where these games are popular. And we're poised to make the
Xbox LIVE Arcade and console game channels an even larger part of our business. LIVE Arcade, in turn, will broaden the types of games generally considered "casual," further extending this line of business for the industry.
Other platforms we've been working with for a few years are just now emerging. These include in-flight entertainment, where you can play games like Bejeweled 2 on a touch screen on the seat in front of you on a plane, and in-hotel offerings where you can play them on your room's TV. We've even got scratch-and-win lottery tickets sporting the Bejeweled brand in three different countries.
As part of this ongoing expansion, PopCap acquired SpinTop Games, in Vancouver, British Columbia, which creates casual games based on proven genres like Solitaire and Mahjong. This independent studio applies contemporary, high-quality production values to create addictive mass-market games. In addition to the game studio, SpinTop has a consumer Website portal, with over 280 downloadable games available, which complements PopCap's own Website boutique.
