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EA's Hasbro games sell 8 million

Littlest Pet Shop, Hasbro Family Game Night, Nerf N-Strike among top sellers to come out of publisher's partnership with family-oriented game company.

EA's partnership with family board game and toy maker Hasbro has been a fruitful one. Today, EA announced that it has sold 8 million Hasbro-branded games at retail since picking up the rights to such properties as Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Nerf from Atari in 2007. The publisher said that it has also sold an additional 500,000 Hasbro-branded games through Xbox Live.

To date, EA has brought 20 of Hasbro's properties to 18 different gaming platforms, the publisher said. The Littlest Pet Shop franchise has been a particularly strong performer, selling 3.5 million units since the fist installment launched for the DS in October 2008. Other top sellers include Nerf N-Strike, Hasbro Family Game Night, and Monopoly, all of which have passed the million-unit sales milestone.

EA attributed the success of Hasbro-branded games to a number of factors. These include the increasing appeal of family-friendly games to mass market audiences, demand for titles targeted specifically at the female demographic, and Hasbro's lasting brand appeal.

Hasbro isn't EA's only extension into the casual market. Beyond its Pogo online gaming portal, on which many Hasbro games are available, the publisher purchased social-networking service-oriented developer Playfish in November 2009 for $275 million. Playfish's biggest hits to date are microtransaction-driven games like Pet Society, Restaurant City, and Country Story.

Tom Magrino
By Tom Magrino

Tom Magrino has covered the games industry since 2006. He's been compared to Steve Martin by Ozzy Osbourne and Daniel Craig by Tim Schafer. His voice, heard largely on GameSpot's podcast, recalls that of Kermit the Frog. It ain't easy bein' Magreen.

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wiidsduelpack 7 pts

Where do this games even sell. That's a ton of Little Pet Shop games. I've only seen Nerf N Strike and that is at an affordable price. That is sad. / I guess Nintendo was right when making a Wii and saying it is a family gaming console. This is horrible for FPS as this games drive away kids to play casual games. Just horrible.

AshieduNwadiei 5 pts

Kids gotta game too. Look at the bright side, these games sell a similar if not full retail price, but cost very little to develop. One bad thing is that they'll start thinking that these are they primary kinds of game they should focus on. We see that's not the case with the Wii. Casual gamers buy games, but the want extreme value for the few games they buy. Remember the old days when people bought the NES and only one of your friends (in my case, besides me) that had one more game than Super Mario Bros? We started out with 6 until the prices started to drop, that's because my mother purchased 2 games a piece for each boy. The first game I skipped class playing wasn't The Littlest Pet Shop though, it was Friday the 13th.

neil108 5 pts

HEY EA can you resurrect the Old Wing Commander series that would be awesome! I don't want to play HelloKitty Online. :(

oneligas 7 pts

on a scale of one to ten this game gets a oh my god i am going to puke from the disgusting cuteness

LosDaddie 5 pts

makes perfect sense. The gaming market is bigger, wider than most people here realize

duke-nukem11 5 pts

there all kids games. bottom line

firebladedx 5 pts

To be honest, I dont see why everyone is so upset. Atari's Nerf beats halo, call of duty or gears hands down any day. It has better graphics, gameplay and more gore. Now excuse me I have lottery tickets to buy and a toaster which works under water to get back to.

2bitSmOkEy 41 pts

Quit posting this sort of crap. We all know how impressionable the entire gaming industry is, someone does something that generates a nice chunk of money and everyone drops what they are doing to spam copy it. Just make what you want to make and do it with passion, money always follows quality.

SDBusDriver1979 19 pts

Such a slap in the face that these games made more money than Dead Space.

chupamelpo 5 pts

I'm not surprise for the sales, I'm more surprise at Atari. perhaps the janitor is running the strategies, marketing, planning, game development, etc for the company?

radwimp 5 pts

Those kid games are a gold mine.

JanusStormsword 5 pts

Spyhunter and pizzaboy, it's not all about you ya know. There happen to be a lot of kids and families out there who play games and these games are made for them. If it's not your cup of tea, then don't buy it, plain and simple. It's not like you're starving for FPS's or other mature games.

monson21502 8 pts

im guilty of buying four of them for 800 points each. and ea and ms is guilty for releaseing the whole set on a disc for cheaper. wont trick me again, enjoy your sales:wink:

JDWolfie 5 pts

The only game I got there was Family game night for Scrabble on 360 Arcade. The only good Hasbro franchise is really those Rollercoaster Tycoon games, especially the first one by Chris Sawyer. That was really good.

SpyHunter89 5 pts

Dear America(n game-shopping consumer base)... YOU SUCK.

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