EA's Hasbro games sell 8 million

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.