Electronic Arts, Hasbro Developing Online Games for Launch of The Hub Channel

Electronic Arts and Hasbro are developing online games that will parallel the October launch of the Hasbro- and Discovery-owned channel The Hub, Chip Lange, senior vice president and general manager of EA’s Hasbro Division, told us in an interview.

The titles will be based on The Hub’s programming and be updated frequently to keep pace with changes in story lines, Lange said. The Hub, which replaces the Discovery Kids channel, will feature at least two shows from Hasbro’s production studios, Hasbro officials said,including My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Transformers. Many other shows will be acquired as The Hub gains its footing, Hasbro has said. Among the original series being picked up is Wot Wots, developed by New Zealand’s WETA Workshop and Pukeko Pictures, which was involved with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Online titles “have a development cadence that’s designed around frequent updates of the software to respond to consumer trends and this aligns well with the television model,” Lange said. “We're able to get early access to what is being worked on and that’s a real benefit to us. We won’t be sitting down for the first time to start development after stuff has been launched.” The Hub will be in 60 million homes giving EA Hasbro a base from which to develop online and mobile titles, Lange said. The Hub is aimed at 2- to 12-year-olds.

While it took the Hasbro-EA joint venture, formed in 2007, “a couple of years to hit our stride,” the partnership is now “working seamlessly with the brand teams saying the same message,” Lange said. The companies are now “out in front” of product planning cycles so that when Hasbro prepares for a launch “we are lining up our digital story,” Lange said. “We're going to do that with the Hub and I think we are just scratching the surface,” he said.

Hasbro-branded videogames sold 8 million units over 18 months ended earlier this year across 20 of the toy company’s brands. The Littlest Pet Shop video games title sold more than 4.5 million units since launch in October 2008 and was expanded to the Internet last year. In addition to EA’s Pogo, Littlest Pet Shop is available for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and as Nintendo’s DSIWare.

The joint venture also is expected to benefit EA’s $300 million acquisition of social games developer Playfish. The company, which has annual revenue of about $75 million, operates social games for Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and others. Playfish claims its social games, including Pet Society and Restaurant City, have been installed more than 150 million times and have more than 60 million monthly active users.

Whether Playfish will turn development to Hasbro brands and bring them to social gaming networks hasn’t been finalized, Lange said, but Hasbro games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk lend themselves to those networks. “We will take Playfish expertise and our expertise in developing for two and a half years and put those together to make a big splash when we move new products into that space,” Lange said.