I Want The Little Top Hat. You Get The Shoe

The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, adds momentum to the casual gaming trend, which has taken off in the past couple of years. The video game industry has long talked of broadening its appeal beyond traditional gamers to families, women and adults. But with the recent success of the Nintendo Wii console and its handheld counterpart, the Nintendo DS, publishers are now leaping headlong into the casual craze, with EA among the most vocal proponents of this strategy.

The Hasbro partnership comes less than a month after EA reorganized its business, creating a dedicated mass-market gaming label called EA Casual Entertainment. EA made clear its intentions to court the casual market at the E3 video game conference last month, where it devoted its press conference to its newest mass-market games such as Boogie and Playground.