时隔许久，视频游戏巨头公司Electronic Arts今天将发布面向iPhone平台的首款Pogo游戏。

据游戏邦了解，Pogo.com是一家于1998年兴起的休闲游戏网站。2001年EA收购该网站后将其打造成为拥有500万月登录用户的热门休闲游戏网站。现在，EA公司发布了一款与pogo网站接轨的iPhone应用，精心将Pogo网站经验复制到iPhone平台。如此一来，有助于令pogo.com区别于一般的休闲手机游戏门户网站。

如果玩家是pogo.com用户，在注册iPhone应用后就可以查看自己的好友列表，挑战情况和排行榜等网站账户资讯。反之，如果玩家在iPhone平台上进行游戏，也可以将游戏结果与Pogo网站同步。

EA公司Pogo分部副总裁兼总经理Michael Marchetti表示“希望将pogo打造成为一款跨平台的经典休闲游戏品牌。”

pogo-poppit

另外，前天EA公司还宣布一款热门Pogo游戏Poppit!将登陆Chrome网络应用商店。目前，已经有多款Pogo游戏运营于Facebook社交网站。同时，EA公司计划在iPhone平台发布5款pogo游戏，分别是Word Whomp, Turbo 21, Poppit! （上图）, Sweet Tooth 2和Mahjong Safari。以上Pogo应用均为免费应用，且支持广告。因此玩家如果想关闭广告，就必须一次性支付2.99美元的费用。但如果玩家是pogo俱乐部的高级用户，iPhone广告功能将自动关闭。

Marchetti表示，之前由于Pogo游戏高品质画面的原因致使EA无法将pogo游戏引进手机平台，而现在iPhone优越的兼容能力可支持Pogo的画面要求。然而，开发Pogo游戏验证系统耗时近9个月。现在玩家激活pogo应用后就可以自由选择喜欢的游戏。随着发布游戏的增多，这些游戏将被添加入Pogo的iPhone应用窗口。

另外，Marchetti指出Pogo原有的用户基础有利于促进游戏的推广。据游戏邦了解，在iPhone平台对游戏进行病毒式传播宣传并不像Facebook社交网站那么容易，因此必须通过社交发现帮助游戏获得更多的用户关注。但目前由于品牌差异原因，EA并没有对旗下所有游戏实行这一策略。以Facebook社交网站为例，FIFA Superstars玩家在体验游戏的同时，可能看到关于另一款游戏Madden NFL Superstars的宣传。然而在iPhone平台，玩家很难看到类似的跨品牌宣传手段。

总体看来，通过这一方式，EA公司或许可以令旗下游戏在众多iPhone应用中脱颖而出。(本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明：游戏邦)

After a long prep period, video game giant Electronic Arts is launching its first Pogo game on the iPhone tomorrow.

Pogo.com has been around as web site for casual gamers since 1998. EA bought the company in 2001 and has built it into a popular casual game site with 5 million unique monthly visitors. Now the company is launching an iPhone app that is integrated with the web site. The integration is what took a long time to do, and it is the integration that could help set this site apart from other casual mobile game portals. EA has been careful to replicate the Pogo web experience on the iPhone.

If you’re a member of Pogo.com, you can sign up for the iPhone app and view your web account stats. You can see your friends, challenges and leaderboards. If you play a game on the iPhone, your results can be incorporated into Pogo’s own web stats.

“We’re taking Pogo from a consumer web experience and taking it to where consumers are,” said Michael Marchetti, senior vice president and general manager of EA’s Pogo division. “We want Pogo to be a classic casual gaming brand that can travel across platforms.”

EA also said yesterday that its Poppit! game, one of the popular Pogo titles, will be available on the Chrome Web app store as well. Pogo games are also already available on Facebook. On the iPhone, EA will make five Pogo games available: Word Whomp, Turbo 21, Poppit! (pictured at top), Sweet Tooth 2, and Mahjong Safari. The Pogo app is free and ad-supported. If you want to turn off ads, you have to pay a one-time $2.99 fee. If you are already a premium subscriber to Club Pogo, the iPhone ads are turned off automatically.

Marchetti said that EA couldn’t bring Pogo to phones before because it require richer graphics capability. The iPhone, however, is perfectly capable of displaying such graphics. It took about nine months because it isn’t easy to create the verification system which authenticates the Pogo identity. When you activate the Pogo app, you can choose among the games and tap to initiate one. As more Pogo games are launched, EA can add them to the Pogo iPhone app window.

The social layer of the Pogo community should help the games spread. On the iPhone, getting a game to be viral isn’t as easy as it is on Facebook. So the social discovery helps games get noticed and played in the mobile setting. But EA doesn’t yet have that same strategy across all of its games, mainly because of branding differences. On Facebook, for instance, you can play FIFA Superstars, a soccer game, and see a promotion for Madden NFL Superstars. But on the iPhone, you won’t see cross-brand promotions, such as Pogo recommending that you try out Need for Speed Shift or other EA Mobile games.

Overall, this sounds like the approach that will help EA’s games stand out among the tens of thousands of games on the iPhone. （Source：VentureBeat）