Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) announced on Tuesday that a wave of its biggest brand-name games will soon be making their way to a digital platform near you. In a press release touting licensing deals with video game makers Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) and Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI), the company listed a dozen or so of its most famous titles that will pop up for play in the latter half of the year on Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Playstation 3, Nintendo's Wii, and on the iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad. Hasbro noted that this will "further expand its top-selling portfolio of Hasbro-inspired digital games that span more than 20 Hasbro brands and 19 major digital platforms."
Included in the list were a series of board games being delivered by EA for the video game consoles, including Monopoly Streets (an enhanced, 3-D version of the old classic), and a bundled collection titled, "Hasbro Family Game Night 3," comprised of staples such as The Game of Life and Clue. EA will also release a series of Littlest Pet Shop titles for the Nintendo DS, in a move to both broaden its DS catalog and to grow the tiny-by-comparison young girl gamer market.
Activision gets some major love from the Big H in their licensed deal to release the next installment of the Transformers video game "War for Cybertron" for consoles and PCs, likely raking its own tidy sum from one of the hottest branded toy-game-and-movie franchises to date. Several variants of the classic RISK board game will be available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Boggle for the iPad will be released as well, joining Hasbro's flagship crossword game, Scrabble, already available for the iPad when it launched earlier in the year.
What do you think about Hasbro's push to digital of its most beloved brands and titles? Let us know in the comments below.
