EA Mobile launches multiple Blackberry titles

EA Mobile has launched a handful of its popular mobile title on the Blackberry App World for Blackberry enabled devices. It’s good to see EA bringing its games to mobile platforms besides iPhone – not everyone uses the iPhone, after all.

The first games to land on Blackberry include Bejeweled, Need for Speed Undercover, RISK, SCRABBLE (in the US and Canada only), Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 3, and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR. Hopefully they’ll bring DOOM RPG and other original titles to the platform as well.

Ubisoft’s Q2 release schedule

Buried amongst its fiscal first quarter 2009 - 2010 results, Ubisoft today revealed it second quarter release schedule (July - September 2009). The list consists mainly of tween games like Imagine, casual board games like Scrabble, and a handful of licensed games like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Full list below.

ACADEMY OF CHAMPIONS (UK, NORDICS COUNTRIES, AUSTRALIA) Wii

AMAZING ADVENTURES THE FORGOTTEN RUINS (EMEA*) Nintendo DS

BFF TV (EMEA) Nintendo DS

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, PSP, PC

BATTLE OF GIANTS: DRAGONS Nintendo DS

FAMILY FEUD 2010 EDITION (US) Nintendo DS, Wii, PC

HEROES OVER EUROPE PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, PC

IMAGINE SALON STYLIST (US) Nintendo DS

IMAGINE DETECTIVE Nintendo DS

IMAGINE PARTY PLANNER (EMEA) Nintendo DS

IMAGINE SOCCER CAPTAIN (US) Nintendo DS

IMAGINE TEACHER: CLASS TRIP Nintendo DS

NEW U FITNESS FIRST PERSONAL TRAINER (EMEA) Wii

THE PRICE IS RIGHT 2010 EDITION (US) Nintendo DS, Wii, PC

SCRABBLE (EMEA) Wii, PC

SOUL CALIBUR BROKEN DESTINY (EMEA) PSP

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SMASH-UP Wii, PlayStation 2

WHERE’S WALDO: THE FANTASTIC JOURNEY (US) Nintendo DS, Wii, PC

* means Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Hasbro: power through partners at E3

Hasbro has more than a dozen of its popular toy and game properties coming to various video game platforms in the second half of this year. The company’s popular board games and toys will be become video games through licensing alliances with Electronic Arts, Activision, and Glu Mobile. The new wave of video games builds on the momentum achieved by EA in the past 18 months with its release of nearly 40 Hasbro-inspired titles across 16 brands and 13 platforms, several of which have held top sales rankings by platform. Additionally, through an extended licensing agreement with Performance Design Products (PDP), a new line of Hasbro-branded video game accessories will land at retail in 2009.

This summer will kick off with the launch of Activision’s TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN in June on the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii, PlayStation 2 , Windows PC, PSP, and Nintendo DS . Glu Mobile will also release the game on a variety of mobile devices as well as a mini-application on the iPhone. EA will launch G.I. JOE The Rise of Cobra on the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION3, Wii, PlayStation2, PSP, Nintendo DS and mobile devices in August.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hasbro Drops Scrabulous Lawsuit

According to an Associated Press report, Hasbro has decided to drop a lawsuit that it used to bully two Indian programmers earlier this year. Good for them.

Hasbro, which owns the rights to the classic word board game Scrabble (America’s good time game), sued the company over its copycat Facebook application Scrabulous. The lawsuit forced the programming duo (two brothers from Calcutta, India named Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla) who do business under the name RJ Softwares to take the application down, citing copyright infringement.

Read the rest of this entry »

UK Mom In Uproar Over DS Scrabble Dirty Words

Okay, so every day we hear about the supposed ills and traumatic effects of violence and sex in video games corrupting the youths of the world, usually mentioned in the same breath as games like Grand Theft Auto, Mass Effect, and Viva Piñata. Hey, I don’t care what anyone else thinks … those candy filled critters reproduce faster than rabbits on Viagra and then gorge themselves in a cannibalistic manner on their fallen friends. But SCRABBLE?!?

According to an article in the UK Daily Mail, a mother who had purchased Ubisoft’s DS adaptation of the popular board game for her 8 year-old son, was stunned to find the game using more than a few words of the seemingly “M-rated” variety. Apparently, during the course of a few matches, the game’s AI controlled opponent used words such as “tits” and “toke”. For the record, both words are, in fact, a part of the official Scrabble dictionary, with “tit” defined as “a small bird” and toke (naturally) as “to take a puff on a marijuana cigarette”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scrabulous Returns as Wordscraper

While the game known as Scrabulous is officially dead, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla have not given up on providing Facebook users with a decent word-smithing game. In less than 48 hours - after Scrabulous was pulled from Facebook at the request of Hasbro - the game has been relaunched under a new name (Wordscraper), with some visual changes and new rules that set it aprt from EA’s officially licensed Facebook Scrabble game. While the volume of traffic that Scrabulous enjoyed on Facebook has not materialized for Wordscraper, one would expect that — once word gets out — the game will once again see some serious traffic.

One thing is certain; the brothers Agarwalla had planned to relaunch the game under a different name to avoid any conflicts with Hasbro and EA - evident in how rapidly Wordscraper has been deployed onto Facebook after Scrabulous was taken down.

Source: mashable.com.

Hasbro Sues Scrabulous Developers

Oh Hasbro, you’re so mean. Instead of sitting down with the creators of the Facebook application Scrabulous, you decide to make an example of them. Whether or not Scrabulous is homage to Hasbro’s popular game or blatant copyright infringement (honestly its a little of both), it stands to reason that a Scrabble-like game is already in place and two talented developers who already have their feet wet in the space might be better as allies (or even better employees) than adversaries. But enemies of the Hasbro state these men are as of this week.

Hasbro is making an example of them. Meanwhile thousands of Scrabulous players are pissed off. Will they forget in a few months and suddenly settle for EA’s version of the popular game? Some will admittedly, but some will forget about playing the popular word-smithing game and move on. You can read about all these antics in this Business Week story, but it is obvious that Hasbro is putting a high scoring word on the board to teach these fan developers a lesson: L-A-W-S-U-I-T.