Buffalo GameBuffs Blog

Today EA has announced some information about their plans for video game versions of Hasbro properties.  Chip Lange, vice president of the company’s Hasbro game studio, revealed some details.  No huge surprises, as far as board games that will be turned into video games, but it’s nice to hear about their plans right from the source. 

Lange refers to the details as this being their first wave of games and news.  They have long term plans for their relationship with Hasbro.  And this makes sense, especially with the surge in popularity of casual games on the Wii and Xbox live arcade. 

This first wave of games this spring will include versions of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Risk and Yahtzee for mobile phones.   Lange goes on to add, though does not give any time frames or details, that EA is also working on versions of Monopoly, Scrabble and the usual phrase of “other titles” for major consoles and they will give more details later this year.  Awww… I want to see the new black ops Risk version on video game consoles too.

I am hopeful for the quality of these video game translations, and I know it’s just words, but Lange goes on to say :

“the games would be more than just digital copies of their real-world counterparts, designed with the capabilities and usage patterns of each device in mind. For instance, mobile users will be able to play “Monopoly” in quick chunks only a few minutes long. On a game console, players will be able to breeze through the game in 30 minutes, rather than the hours needed to finish the board game.”

As a side note, it was inevitable with the Wii popularity, that EA will also be translating non boardgame Hasbro properties into games.  Two of these announced for the Wii and DS are aimed at younger boys and girls.  They are Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf N-Strike.  These will apparently be coming out before the board game translations.  But hopefully that is because they will take more time to make them quality games.

Read the full Reuter’s article here