The production company has plans to development games and other interactive entertainment based on the films it backs, according to Variety. It already has video game movie adaptations based on Epic Games Gears of War and Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft properties, as well as easily adapted films like Clash of the Titans and Kung Fu in the works.

Legendary was reported to be in talks with Epic Games late last year to acquire the Unreal Engine developer.

With Brash Entertainment having collapsed last year, screwing developers over left and right, itself reported to have fostered a deal for a Clash of the Titans video game, an internally developed game based on that fantasy epic seems likely to fall under Legendary's new digital venture. And with another Batman film a foregone conclusion, we'd expect Legendary to pursue an adaptation of that as well, hopefully with less disastrous results than Pandemic's stab at The Dark Knight.

Legendary launches digital arm [Variety]

The publisher also confirmed the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, who was named president of EA Casual in May 2007. Vrabeck was the president of Activision Publishing prior to her stint at Electronic Arts.

The new Sims and Casual Label moniker comes two years after the publisher created a casual-centric label for their development studios.

In a prepared statement Electronic Arts explained the reasoning behind the decision and said that further announcements about EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives will be coming in the days and weeks ahead.

We’ve learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic. With the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games — development and marketing — into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics.

In the days and weeks ahead, we will make further announcements on the reporting structure for the other businesses in the Casual Label including EA Mobile, Pogo, Media Sales and Online Casual Initiatives. Those businesses remain growth priorities for EA and deserve strong support in a group that will compliment their objectives.

The decision to absorb the Casual Label into a variety of other studios within EA comes a week after Electronic Arts laid off 600 of their employees and told investors that they were posting a $310 million net loss for the quarter.

Earlier last month Rod Humble took over The Sims label, replacing Nancy Smith who was to be stepping into a yet-to-be named executive role at EA. Maybe it has something to do with this reorganization?

I get less concerned about game reviews because the casual gamers don't read any of those things...They're not swayed by a low score on IGN or a low score out of one of these gaming sites.

It's a little bit amusing, in that it's people reviewing games against measures that are important to core gamers yet are not important to casual gamers...The concept of a one-size-fits-all evaluation tool isn't as relevant...The measurement [of a game's appeal] for women aged 25 to 34 would more likely be whether or not they'd hang up on their girlfriend to play this game. 'Would you hang up a phone conversation for this game?' That'd probably be a truer measure for that target audience.

But the fact is, Vrabeck probably isn't all that far off the mark. And I'd expect casual games to be influenced far more by peer review, quick star feedback systems and one-liners at the place of purchase, than some gaming site exclusive.

EA Casual and the Problem with Reviews [nextgen]