EA Bringing Pogo Web Games To iOS App

Electronic Arts plans to expand its Pogo service of casual web-based games to Apple's iOS platforms with an app to be released tomorrow. The app, which will be available in both an ad-supported free version and a $2.99 advertising-free version, will include five popular Pogo.com games including word scramble title Word Whomp, reflex-based card game Turbo 21 and physics-based puzzle game Poppit, Bloomberg reports. EA had previously adapted some individual Pogo games for iOS devices, including those based on Hasbro properties Scrabble and Monopoly. But this will be the first iOS app with Pogo branding. The move follows a series of recent moves towards the mobile, social and casual spaces for EA, including the October purchase of Angry Birds publisher Chillingo, as well as last year's $300 million purchase of casual game maker Playfish. Yesterday, EA released HTML5-compatible versions of many of its web-based Pogo games for Google's newly unveiled Chrome Web Store. EA purchased Pogo for approximately $40 million in 2001. Since then, the site has gone on to attract over 15 million monthly visitors who play nearly 100 free games offered on the service.