Snake in Restaurant City!

Yes there is a snake in Restaurant City! Well, not exactly those snakes that bite, but the game 'Snake'.

It is somewhat surprising actually to see an 'arcade game' within the game itself. We've always seen games within games, but I didn't expect to see it within a Facebook game like Restaurant City.

The Snake game can be activated if you have an arcade game machine within Restaurant City. The control is pretty simple, i.e. movement of the snake with the 4 arrow keys. to eat up ingredients that looked like actual ingredients in RC. There is a score function at the end of the game. I couldn't see if other 'functional items' giving this additional feature. Now that Playfish has introduced Snake, wonder what else would they add? Tetris? Bejewelled?

Electronic Arts bought Playfish!

Yupz Electronic Arts has bought Playfish, and from this CNA article it is at a hefty price tag (in my opinion).

for 275 million dollars in cash and 25 million dollars in equity retention arrangements for employees.

In addition, EA said it will pay up to 100 million dollars if the privately held Playfish reaches certain performance milestones through December 31, 2011.

Yeah that is a max of US$400 millions!

I must admit that Playfish has been a very innovative games developer, who has been able to track what consumers want and provides new features to the games. For example it has added features to prompt players to visit others in Restaurant City (in addition to other features).

Oh well, after Playfish, who next to be considered for buyout? Zynga? Zynga has also been rolling out new games that parallel many of other similar successful models (e.g. Cafe World). So yes I think it is time some of the bigger games company start to look at the new developers for some measures of consolidation in the industry.