“Our first deal was with [Microsoft]. I met the head of Microsoft’s gaming division on a flight back from a game-developers conference in 1999. I just happened to sit next to this guy and we had a good chat. When we started PopCap, I emailed him and said we’d like to sell Bejeweled for $35,000. Microsoft said no, but they agreed to license it from us for $1,500 a month. It seemed like bad luck at the time, but in retrospect it was good luck. If we had sold Bejeweled, we wouldn’t own the rights to it in the future and there would be no PopCap today as we know it.”
|