So, you may have heard that Electronic Arts signed a new deal with Hasbro to create casual games based on notable Hasbro licenses such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Nerf, Tonka and Littlest Pet Shop (?).

As a results of this, Hasbro and EA jointly set out a special promo-only commemorative Monopoly set, featuring both Electronic Arts and Hasbro properties in place of the normal property names - and kindly sent one over to GameSetWatch (and yes, publishers, we can be sent stuff, we're not below mentioning that!) Anyhow, here are a few pics I took of the special board:

Honestly, the real story here - which I sadly don't have time to recount in detail - is the completely terrible deal Hasbro did in selling their interactive division (along with the Atari and Microprose brand names and games!) to Infogrames for about $100 million - mainly in stock - back in 2001.

Hasbro has spent tens of millions of dollars since buying their interactive rights back - for example, $19 million most recently and $65 million back in 2005. In fact, if you count the $22.3 million that 2K paid for the Civilization franchise, then Infogrames effectively got rights to the Atari name and all their games - plus other Hasbro rights they still hold such as those for Dungeons & Dragons, and other stuff like Games.com and various other Microprose properties - for free. OUCH.

Mind you, Infogrames is gradually drowning under its long-term debt after its massive spending spree, of which this acquisition was just a small part - but this one was the steal of the century. Still, should be fun to see some of these Hasbro properties in slightly better-funded hands, as long as you're not an EA hater, mm?