Electronic Arts said Tuesday it will acquire PopCap games, maker of Bejeweled.
Image courtesy PopCap

Following several weeks of rumors, publisher Electronic Arts said Tuesday that it will acquire the casual gamemaker behind Zuma Blitz and Plants vs. Zombies.

EA will pay $650 million and an additional $100 million in stock for PopCap Games, which also creates the popular Bejeweled series of puzzle games. As of last year, Bejeweled had sold over 50 million units. PopCap has moved a total of 150 million games, mostly on digital platforms like Facebook, iOS and Android.

“We picked EA because they have recast their culture around making great digital games,” said David Roberts, CEO of PopCap, in a statement.

As a primarily digital developer and publisher, PopCap fits with the digital distribution strategy that EA has said will make up the majority of game sales by 2012. Last month, EA launched Origin, an online distribution service for games it publishes.

Over the past few years, the company best known for big-budget games like Madden NFL and Dead Space has made big moves into small games. In 2009, it acquired social game developer Playfish, adding the Facebook gamemaker to a stable of recent acquisitions that includes Firemint (Flight Control HD) and Chillingo (Angry Birds).

At a game preview event held last week at its Redwood City campus, Electronic Arts mostly eschewed discussions of console games to talk about its upcoming social and mobile game products.

“We are really obsessed right now with figuring out how to tear down the barriers to entry to get into some of these games,” said Chip Lange, head of the EA Interactive division, at the event.