
EA Buys Playfish For $300 Million, Plus a $100 Million Earnout - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/not-playing-around-electronic-arts-buys-playfish-for-275-million/
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dschobel
_Last year at a presentation at the Founder’s Forum in Hampshire, England, CEO
Kristian Segerstrale put up a slide with a dinosaur and expressed his desire
to “kill EA.” Now he’s joining them instead._

I love the idea of terrifying your potential buyers into an acquisition rather
than wooing them on bended knee. We need more of that.

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khangtoh
That's pretty typical. Startups get bought out because they start taking
market shares away from the 8lb gorilla. If they're wooing them, there's
really something wrong there and they should start thinking real hard how to
compete and gain market share against the gorilla rather than the former.

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byrneseyeview
I don't want to make too much of the typo, but Playfish really _is_ a horde of
8lb. gorillas.

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khangtoh
EA did spurn off an unit named 8lb gorilla to make iPhone games.

[http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/11/ea-quietly-opens-8lb-
goril...](http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/11/ea-quietly-opens-8lb-gorilla-to-
make-smaller-iphone-games/)

~~~
byrneseyeview
Oops. Thanks for the correction.

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Tiktaalik
I'm a bit surprised that EA didn't try to simply just win this market over
themselves. With their stable of franchises it seems like it would be a feat
they could have achieved. They even already have a casual focused online site,
Pogo.com. I expected them to try to retool a team from that group into doing
just Facebook games, but it seems like they didn't really even attempt it. I
suppose they felt they just didn't have enough man power.

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electromagnetic
Retooling a team to go from programming real games in real languages to making
a flash game is a rather absurd prospect. Are they really going to convince
people to leave teams working in their Sports division, or get anyone to leave
one of their major franchises with real experience?

If I was working on a new Medal of Honour or Battlefield, or even The Sims,
you'd have to shoot me in both kneecaps before I'd consider taking my name off
a game that could boost my career.

All you're going to get to make these games are either raw flash kiddies, or
you have to take over a company with experience in making money on flash
games. IMO I'm not surprised one bit, buying a company like Playfish was EA's
only move to make.

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Tiktaalik
That's why I said retool a group from Pogo.com. If you look at that site it's
pretty clear that EA's had folks working on casual flash games for ages. It
would not be a difficult move over to get folks from that group working on
Facebook apps.

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allenp
There is a difference between casual games and social games though, and it is
the social know-how that EA is buying.

