PopCap CEO: EA Likes Us They Way We Are

How will Bejeweled creator PopCap Games change now that it's part of EA? Not too much, according to PopCap CEO Dave Roberts. He believes the essence of the company will remain the same.

"Well, PopCap's been changing every single year for the last 10 years, but hopefully, we'll keep the essence of what we do here," Roberts told Guardian.

Roberts says that EA is a good fit for PopCap now. That wasn't always the case, though.

"One of the things I like about EA – and I don't think this was true of them a few years ago – is that they care about games very passionately. I think they lost that for a while," said Roberts. "The EA of four years ago was the EA that was arrogant and didn't really give a shit about games. At some point though, and I personally didn't even notice this about EA until around last year, but things had changed. EA was different; people were actually excited about their jobs again, and I don't think that had happened in a while."

"Every indication is, that EA like us as we are. They've not really proven to be very good at making casual content, so there's no reason why they'd want to mess with what we have here."

The relationship isn't one-sided, though. Roberts believes EA will help PopCap with "massive porting efforts". The developers at PopCap will be able to focus on making new games instead of porting existing games to new platforms.

Ports probably do take up a lot of PopCap's time. They try to make all of their hits, well, omnipresent. Plants vs. Zombies, for example, debuted on the PC and Mac but is now available for the Xbox 360, PS3, DS, and multiple mobile phones.

EA's acquisition of PopCap should be finalized in August. They're expected to pay roughly $750 million for the Seattle-based developer.