Electronics Arts has announced today that it has purchased developer PopCap Games; most famous for cult favorite games like Plants VS Zombies, Bejeweled and Peggle. Though specifics of the deal are expected to be announced during a conference call scheduled for later tonight, it’s expected that the EA could be ponying up more than $750 million in cash and stocks.

“EA and PopCap are a compelling combination,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello in a statement released to the press. “PopCap’s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerated our drive towards a $1 billion digital business. EA’s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels.”

It’s been hinted at over the last few weeks that someone was interested in buying the indie developer and rumors suggested everyone from EA to Activison.

“We picked EA because they have recast their culture around making great digital games,” said David Roberts, CEO of PopCap. “By working with EA, we’ll scale our games and services to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even bigger, global audience.”

Android owners rejoice! PopCap has finally detailed the release of Plants VS Zombie and Chuzzle on the operating system; and even more — they’ll be free. Well, for a day.

The two games will be released exclusively via the Amazon Android Marketplace (which itself is free) and will be free to download the first day of availability. Chuzzle hits the service tomorrow and will be exclusive until May 30.

PopCap hasn’t released any specifics about when Plants VS Zombies would be hitting the service, but when it does, expect a very sharp drop in productivity from this proud Android owning Editor.

PopCap Games announced plans to release its multi-platform hit Plants vs. Zombies for the Nintendo DS. The DS adaptation will feature the same gameplay modes featured in the original version, including Adventure, Survival and Puzzle modes, and mini-games, as well as new and exclusive game content.

Since its debut in 2009, Plants vs. Zombies has sold millions of units worldwide.  It was available via iTunes, and remains near the top of both the iPhone and iPad sales charts. The XBLA adaptation, due to be released next month, is anticipated to be one of the year’s most popular and successful titles for the console market.

Plants vs. Zombies is expected to arrive on North American store shelves in January 2011, and will carry an SRP of US $19.95. For more information, visit www.popcap.com.

PopCap Games, the publisher/developer most famous for their flagship title Bejeweled, today announced that for the first time they’ve taken outside funding to the tune of $22.5 million.

The money came from Meritech Capital Partners, a late-stage investment firm, and Larry Bowman and John McCaw, both longtime technology industry luminaries and investors.

“PopCap is arguably the most unique video game company on the planet” stated Rob Ward, managing director at Meritech. “While other video game companies put out more flops than hits, PopCap has never produced a game that wasn’t a critical and commercial success. Taking the company’s boutique development style and universally appealing product lineup to the top of the video game food chain will be an exciting, potentially industry-changing, experience and we’re happy to be a part of it.”

This investment marks the first time in PopCap’s 10-year‚  history that they’ve raised capital for operational purposes, including working capital and potential acquisitions.

Potential acquisitions you say?

We’re excited to have additional working capital that lets us be more aggressive with our expansion into social media and reaching new geographies” said David Roberts, CEO of PopCap.

More money is always nice, but what PopCap does with it, remains unknown. Hopefully it’s not blown on some mammoth Bejeweled statue at their offices.

PopCap Games is now porting their best selling PC titles to the Nintendo DS. Their first attempt is a game that fits the system perfectly, as it is a search-and-find title that utilizes the touch screen and stylus interface. The game is all about being given a picture and finding hidden objects in the picture; this means that while the top screen shows a zoomed out view of the area, and the up to ten objects you are currently looking for, the bottom screen is used to find those objects.

The game has 18 locations to look for objects in. There are 20 levels, and for each level there are a few locations where you need to find up to 10 objects. When you find all 10 objects you go to another location until you find all the objects for that level. Once you find all the objects for a level you get to play a mini-game to finish the level. The mini-games consist of Memory Match, Jigsaw Puzzle, Tile rotate, Mah-Jongg Match, and Word Puzzle.

The search-and-find locations allow the player to move the zoom window around with the directional pad, the a/b/x/y pad, or using the stylus. If you click and drag you can move the screen around as well. To find an object, click on the screen where the object is. This mimics the use of a mouse on a computer, though with the stylus you can press directly on the area. The objects are sometimes small though, so they can be hard to find.‚  Some of them will also be hidden as decoration in other objects; for example, you need to find an ear, but the ear is found as an etching in a tree, or the star you are looking for is a decorative part of a chair.

The difficulty increases as the game progresses. Initially, umbrellas are referred to as “umbrellas” , then are labeled as “parasols.” Another example is “horse shoes” become “lucky shoes” or “esquire shoes.” They also will say find two eyes and one of them might be an eye ball, where the other one is the word “eye” painted on the wall.

The game does offer one helping part to the search. There is a hint button at the bottom that will move the screen so that an object is on the screen. Part of the screen will also shine, helping you zoom in on the object. If you have multiple objects left to find you never know which one it will focus in on, so it’s probably better to find all of the objects you can first, in order to avoid pointing you towards objects you already knew of. Don’t spam the hint button though, as the game penalizes you for its use, and has a delay set up in between uses.

The game does get a little tedious because of the limited number of locations. Once you’ve been to a location more than once you’ll start to remember where some objects are, which makes it easier to search there again. This also makes it easier when they change the names, because the player has seen the objects before and can remember what they found before and realize the new name. There are nearly 40 objects in every location though, so it’s still likely to have at least one new object each time you go to that location. Though with 10 objects per level it’s also likely you will see ones you’ve found before.

After the levels, you play a mini-game. These play out another portion of the story, and are designed somewhat like boss levels. They switch things up in these mini-game portions sometimes though; in Mah-Jongg or Memory, you will have to match up objects based on on association or similarities instead of just exact matches.

I thought the game was a lot of fun, and think it works better as a DS game than as a PC game. I was fairly addicted to it until I finished it, which goes to show how well a simple concept can work sometimes. My most significant complaint is that the game’s storyline was not that great, though it’s to be expected in this type of game as well. Beyond that, the actual gameplay is fun, so fans of the genre should give this game a look.

Years ago, PopCap Games tried to sell the rights to their fledgling little title, Bejeweled, for $60,000.

They got no takers.

Today, they announed that more than 25 million copies of Bejeweled has been sold worldwide.

“Considering we tried to sell Bejeweled outright to more than one industry giant back in the early days of our company, and got no takers … this little game has done all right for itself,” said Jason Kapalka, chief creative officer and co-founder of PopCap, and the original designer of Bejeweled and its sequel. “I vividly recall prospective buyers telling us ‘It’s not even a game,’ while showing us the door.”

Thus, the casual gaming revolution began.

And that 25 million is just paid purchases. PopCap says that 350 million copies of Bejeweled/Bejeweled 2 have been downloaded off their website and downloaded to mobile phones. They’ve earned $300 million on the title plus millions more off online advertising around the game.

The Bejeweled franchise has been available for Web, PCs and Macs, mobile phones, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, PDAs and Blackberrys, iPods and iPhone, in-flight airline systems, on-demand TV systems in hotels and scratch-off lottery tickets in many states.

“All told, Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2 have collectively been enjoyed for an estimated 6 billion hours — the equivalent of 60 people playing the game 24 hours a day since the last Ice Age 11,400 years ago,” PopCap said Tuesday.

Not bad for something that’s “not even a game.”