On-line gaming

Social City is one of Playdom's leading games...

How big has on-line gaming become? Walt Disney bought social networking games developer Playdom for $563.2 million. Playdom is a leader in games designed for and played on the social networking platforms Facebook and MySpace. Playdom was a start-up founded by a couple of UC Berkeley grads just a few short years ago.

Disney is positioning itself not only to grab a large chunk of the on-line gaming market, but grabbing new intellectual property for perspective future character vehicles: movies, cartoons, toys, etc. According to Disney CEO Robert Iger, "This acquisition furthers our strategy of allocating capital to high-growth businesses that can benefit from our many characters, stories and brands, delivering them in a creatively compelling way to a new generation of fans on the platforms they prefer."

Thanks for the heads up goes to the DailyFinance.