EA Merging Sims and Casual Divisions
Casual Gamer Chick is reporting that Kathy Vrabeck, President of EA's Casual Games Division, is stepping down, and that EA has decided to merge their SIMS division with Casual Games.

Casual Gamer Chick: President of EA's Casual Games Division Steps Down

My thoughts: Interesting move on EA's part. This implies (to me) two things:

#1 - EA considers the target audience for The Sims to be very similar to the Casual Games audience. I don't think they are wrong here.

#2 - EA doesn't believe the traditional difference between casual games and their SIMS line - namely, budget - to be a significant factor. This is more interesting. It's true that casual games have become much more expensive over the last several years, but still the design / development process - by my understanding - has remained pretty distinct between "modern mainstream" development, and are profitable mainly for having a much smaller overhead.

However - the evolution (devolution?) of casual game development hasn't been all that different from mainstream video games if you go back to the late 70's / early 80's. Can it be that EA believes the profitability (and competition) of casual games warrants their assimilation into a more mainstream process?

This latter point is more interesting in that certain business units, like Pogo and their mobile casual games group, may go elsewhere.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:13 AM (Permalink)