Can Harry Potter save the day (and quarter) for EA?

Electronic Arts and Warner Bros. Interactive announced that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game will be in stores worldwide on June 30.

The long-awaited launch should be a big deal for EA’s fiscal quarter that ends June 30, and the launch will be just ahead of the July debut of Warner Bros. Pictures film based on the sixth novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

In the game, Harry Potter will return to Hogwarts to survive a sixth year. Players can engage in wizard duels, mix potions, and fly on brooms to lead the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The game was developed by EA Bright Light in Guildford, England, the same team that made other multi-million unit selling Harry Potter games. This game should be pretty polished, since it was delayed last year because the movie schedule pushed back. It will be on all major game systems. For EA, it should prove to be an important title, as will the Sims 3, which ships on June 3.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.