EA Ready to Come Out and Pla-ay In Social Gaming

While EA stays mum about buying Playfish, the popular game publisher has already been taking a serious look at the social gaming space.

In addition to quietly launching Pogo Puppies on Facebook (which will be officially announced next week) and employing a collection of social game designers based in LA, the company recently purchased J2Play, which provides technology that allows game makers to publish their games on all social networks.

J2Play, which was created in 2006 by Rob Balahura, was designed to give smaller developers a way to stick their games on social networks, and avoid having giving up over half their profits to portal sites in exchange for exposure to a larger game-playing audience.

Whether this is simply an easy way for EA to put its casual games from Pogo.com on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, et al or something bigger remains to be seen. But it certainly says one thing -- EA's more than ready to come out and play on the social gaming scene.

Related:
- Rumor: EA Snaps Up Playfish for $250 Million
- Pet Society Killer? Pogo Puppies Arrives on Facebook