Company Town

Interactive: Capital Cities/ABC and San Mateo, Calif.-based Electronic Arts have formed a joint venture to develop and publish interactive software for personal computers and video game machines, company sources said Monday. Each company is expected to invest about $10 million in the new venture, dubbed ABC/EA Home Software. The deal marries the interactive expertise of Electronic Arts--the largest independent producer of electronic games--with the libraries and programming skills of ABC’s news and entertainment production arms. Cap Cities/ABC has been looking for a multimedia partner to help it gain a foothold in the rapidly growing interactive industry. Electronic Arts, whose merger plans with educational software giant Broderbund fell through earlier this year, has been searching for a partner to bolster its offerings in education and information-based software. Electronic Arts’ software lines aimed at children, which include a game based on the Sesame Street characters and the rights to the popular children’s book character Madeleine, will be incorporated into the new firm. Greg Bestick, who helped launch the popular CD-ROM version of Compton’s Encyclopedia, will head the company. Cap Cities/ABC multimedia chief Stephen Weiswasser is expected to make the announcement at a news conference scheduled for this morning in New York.