Bejeweled-creator Popcap to launch social games hub in Japan, U.S. release coming?

Seattle-based PopCap, or the Zynga of casual games as I like to call them, is launching a social gaming hub in Japan called Pop Tower in early 2011. While the project is being developed by Japanese developer Taito, the folks behind classics like Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble, PopCap's Japanese office is overseeing the project. The service is set to launch on GREE, a popular Japanese social network, with games like Bejeweled and Zuma geared toward Japanese audiences. Come on PopCap, it's Bejeweled. As if it needs to be geared towards any audience--don't be so modest to say that some audiences out there would be able to resist its addictive charms.

One place to find all of PopCap's games? Count us--hold it, PopCap hasn't made anything official, but it did say, "Our ambition for Pop Tower is to bring the best of PopCap to Japanese customers; and hopefully make some discoveries about the mobile social space that we can then share with gamers internationally," to Pocket Gamer. But the question is, would American gamers go for a PopCap hub on, say, Facebook?

Um, yes. Given the company's rampant success on Facebook through Bejeweled Blitz and the soon-to-come Zuma Blitz, Pop Tower should be a shoo-in in the U.S. and even Europe. If PopCap keeps this up (along with their solid mobile games), they could become even more of a threat to Zynga than companies like Playdom and CrowdStar. In the meantime, we're making our pre-orders for Bejeweled 3ASAP.

[Source: PopCap]

Would you play PopCap games in a central hub like PopCap Tower if it were released in the U.S.? What PopCap game would you like to see make it into Facebook next? Let us know in the comments. Add Comment.