Sony Computer Entertainment acquires Sucker Punch Productions

August 6, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) has acquired Sucker Punch Productions, creators of the top-selling Sly Cooper and inFamous franchises. Sucker Punch Productions will join the global development operation of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS).  Day-to-day operations will continue to be run by the current management team and company founders in conjunction with SCE WWS Foster City Studio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Based in Bellevue, Washington, Sucker Punch Productions is the developer of the Sly Cooper series for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and the inFamous franchise on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, with combined franchise sales surpassing seven million units worldwide. Best known for signature creative talents, including award winning animation and art direction, visual style, immersive storylines, strong characters and highly interactive worlds, Sucker Punch has created some of the most successful games in PlayStation history.

Day-to-day operations will continue to be run by the current management team and company founders in conjunction with SCE WWS Foster City Studio.  Financial terms of this arrangement are not disclosed.

“Sucker Punch Productions is one of the most highly acclaimed development studios in the industry and we have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with the company for over 12 years. We are delighted to officially welcome them to the SCE family,” saidShuhei Yoshida, president, SCE WWS.  “The addition of Sucker Punch to SCE WWS reiterates our dedication to developing world class gaming experiences that can only be found on the PlayStation platform. With one of the strongest exclusive software lineups in the PS3’s history, combined with the diverse, innovate content in the works for PlayStation Vita, consumers have a lot to be excited about this year.”

USA, Foster City, CA & Bellevue, WA

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EA to acquire PopCap Games

August 1, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Electronic Arts (EA) is to acquire PopCap Games, a provider of games for mobile phones, tablets, PCs and social network sites. PopCapa’s titles include Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled, and Zuma.

“EA and PopCap are a compelling combination,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello. “PopCap’s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1 billion digital business. EA’s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels.”

“PopCap has a proven financial trajectory with sustained revenue growth and double-digit operating margins,” said EA CFO Eric Brown. “On a non-GAAP basis, this deal is expected to be at least ten-cents accretive in fiscal year 2013.”

PopCap has more than 150 million games installed and played worldwide on platforms such as Facebook®, RenRen, Google™, iPhone™, iPad™ and Android. In calendar year 2010, approximately 80% of PopCap’s revenue was on high growth digital platforms.

EA will pay approximately $650 million in cash and $100 million in stock. Plus an earn-out that could be worth (at the top end) up to $550M. EA will also provide up to $50 million in long-term equity retention awards to PopCap employees to be granted over the next four years.

USA, Redwood City, CA

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Live Gamer acquires gamerDNA Media and BrandPort

July 19, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Live Gamer has acquired New York-based video game ad network gamerDNA Media, and engagement advertising platform BrandPort. The two additions will form Live Gamer Media, a new business unit complementing Live Gamer’s microtransaction offerings.

The pairing of gamerDNA Media and BrandPort offers advertisers a single source for targeting gamers, including both hardcore gamers, and casual/social gamers.

“Launching Live Gamer Media through the acquisitions of two impressive companies — gamerDNA and BrandPort — offers advertisers a one-stop partner for connecting with gamers in a whole new way,” said Andrew Schneider, president and co-founder of Live Gamer, “We’ve brought together the reach of display with the innovation and high-engagement levels of virtual goods incentive video — both gamers and advertisers win.”

USA, New York, NY

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SPARK Ventures sells half its stake in Mind Candy valuing the business as US$200m

June 29, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

SPARK Ventures has sold half of its stake in Mind Candy, the makers of kids pet monster games website moshimonsters.com, for $3.1 million. It values the business at US$200m based on the price paid for SPARK Ventures shares.

Moshimonsters has over 50m registered players worldwide, has successfully launched the sale of physical monster toys in major toy shops and launched the Moshimonsters magazine. Moshimonsters has a significant American and international client base. Mind Candy is headquartered in London and has around 70 staff.

Thomas Teichman, Chairman of SPARK Venture Management Ltd (which manages all SPARK’s assets) and Director of Mind Candy Inc. said ” At start up we backed the brilliantly creative and visionary founder of Mind Candy, Michael Acton Smith, in 2004, and are impressed and delighted by its rapid growth and popularity among children in over 180 countries. Its the second time we have successfully backed the founder in the last 12 years having backed Firebox.com, a successful B to C business, also at start up by Michael in 1999.”

UK, London

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Intent Media acquires UBM titles for £2.4m

June 27, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Independent business media specialist Intent Media is to acquire the UK entertainment and technology product portfolio of UBM plc for a total cash consideration of £2.4m.

Intent specialises in entertainment, technology and leisure markets. Its portfolio already consists of over a dozen market leading online, print and event brands across video games, music, computing, mobile, toys, licensing and cycling.

The titles being acquired include Television Broadcast Europe, Music Week, Pro Sound News Europe and Installation Europe, plus additional websites, newsletters, conferences, show dailies and awards events. Last year this portfolio generated £5.4m of revenue.

Intent Media is headquartered in Hertford, England but is opening an additional office in Islington Green, London, this summer. Up to 36 staff will transfer on completion of the deal and total staff count will rise to around 90, with projected combined revenues of over £10 million for the financial year ending September 30th 2012.

“This is a significant move for Intent, essentially doubling the size of the company. We are heading into markets that fit our current landscape, whilst also continuing our policy of holding a leadership position wherever we operate. The brands we are taking over are well established, with experienced staff and impressive heritage,” said Intent Media managing director Stuart Dinsey.

“Intent has become the UK’s leading business media player in entertainment and technology. We are very excited to have added these new brands. Our policy of investment in online and events will continue, whilst ensuring longevity where possible for the core print titles.”

UBM is selling the portfolio on behalf of its UBM Connect division. The transaction is expected to complete in the next six weeks, subject to the conclusion of a TUPE consultation process.

“I am pleased we will pass stewardship of these well-established entertainment and technology titles to Intent Media, which focuses on serving specialist entertainment, technology and leisure markets,” said UBM Connect CEO Adrian Barrick.

Existing core Intent Media brands include MCV: The Market for Computer & Video Games, Develop, ToyNews, Mobile Entertainment, Bikebiz, PCR, Musical Instrument Professional, Audio Professional International and Licensing.biz.

Events run by Intent include The London Games Conference, MI Retail Conference & Expo, Monetising Mobile Conference and sundry trade awards.

Intent Media’s previous acquisitions:

  • MCV launched in September 1998 (when we were MCV Media Limited)
  • Develop acquired November 2000
  • ToyNews acquired June 2001
  • Management buy-out from German listed outfit Computec (and became Intent Media) March 2002
  • CTW acquired (from Highbury) and incorporated into MCV March 2002
  • CTO acquired (from Trinity Mirror) and incorporated into PCR 2006
  • BikeBiz acquired in February 2006
  • MI Pro acquired in March 2006
  • Audio Pro International acquired in March 2006
  • Music Trade News accquired (and incorporated into MI Pro) July 2008
  • All assets of Skep Media acquired January 2009
  • All assets of Prestige Media acquired January 2009

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GamersFirst acquires Fallen Earth

June 22, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

GamersFirst has acquired Fallen Earth from Fallen Earth, LLC. The current 12-person creative team behind Fallen Earth, headed by Lead Game Designer Marie “AroSei” Croall, will join GamersFirst’s development studio Reloaded Productions to lead the transition of Fallen Earth to a hybrid Free2Play game with an ongoing membership system. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Going forward GamersFirst will provide all publishing services, backend development and technical operations while Croall’s team will continue their work on the upcoming Alpha County expansion.

The Fallen Earth team is joined by GamersFirst veterans Tracy Spaight, executive designer, and Joseph Willmon, associate game director, to integrate the award-winning MMO into the broader GamersFirst universe. Spaight and Willmon bring years of Free2Play publishing and development expertise to an already stellar Fallen Earth crew.

Once transitioned to Free2Play, Fallen Earth will give free players completely unrestricted permanent access to every zone and instance in the game. Several types of services, items and conveniences will continue being sold in the Fallen Earth store. Subscriptions will be replaced by a tiered membership system that caters to players of all levels of engagement, and each membership will include reward points that can be used to obtain store items for free on a monthly basis.

Current subscribers who maintain their subscriptions through the estimated five month transition period will collect significant rewards when the game completes the transition, projected for Q4 of this year. “Veteran Rewards” will include lifetime upgrades to a premium tier membership for the price of an existing subscription, as well as unique veteran-only items, the value of which will be determined by the number of months the player subscribed between June 2011 and the completion of the transition.

“Anyone who played Fallen Earth knows just how rich and engaging its game world is, and we feel extremely lucky to bring this game into our family of free MMO games,” said Joe Rush, vice president of game operations for GamersFirst. “This acquisition gives Fallen Earth instant economies of scale as part of the GamersFirst family, and by sharing our many years of revenue generation strategies and publishing expertise we expect the Fallen Earth franchise to continue growing for years to come.”

“Fallen Earth has a number of unique and innovative game features, and we felt it was important to incorporate this outstanding creative team into Reloaded Productions’ staff,” said Bjorn Book-Larsson, COO of GamersFirst and head of Reloaded Productions. “It was important to retain what made Fallen Earth popular and unique, and we are therefore thrilled to have this particular band of passionate game creators joining our growing global studio team.”

USA, Irvine, CA & Cary, NC

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Research In Motion, acquires social mobile gaming business Scoreloop

June 9, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has acquired social mobile gaming business Scoreloop.

Scoreloop was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Munich, Germany with offices in the US and Asia. The company was funded by European VCs Target Partners and Earlybird.

Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations at RIM, said on the Blackberry blog, “We’re excited that the Scoreloop team is joining the BlackBerry® Developer team and bringing their expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform. We have recently enabled our developers to create social app experiences through our BBM™ Social Platform and have seen some very innovative applications result from that. We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform.”

Canada, Ontario & Germany Munich

 

 

 

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RockYou acquires 3 Blokes game development studio

June 1, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Social gaming company RockYou has acquired social game developer 3 Blokes. Based in Brisbane, Australia. 3 Blokes will operate independently as a RockYou studio and develop strategy and combat-driven Facebook games. RockYou is expanding its studio system to support top independent developers around the world as it continues to grow their social game portfolio.

Founded in 2006, 3 Blokes has developed four social games for the Facebook platform.

“We’re incredibly excited to welcome 3 Blokes into the RockYou family, and have been deeply impressed by their wealth of expertise in both traditional and social gaming,” said Jonathan Knight, RockYou’s SVP of Games. “Their unique design sensibilities are a bridge between the casual and competitive gaming landscapes on Facebook. We’re looking forward to supporting them on our collective mission to deliver the world’s very best social games.”

USA, Redwood, CA & Australia, Brisbane

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Perfect World to acquire online game developer Cryptic Studios from Atari

May 31, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Perfect World, a leading online game developer and operator based in China, is toacquire Cryptic Studios, a California-based online game developer from Atari, the sole shareholder of Cryptic Studios. Perfect World will pay approximately €35 million in cash, subject to working capital and other adjustments.

“We are very pleased to sign the agreement to acquire Cryptic Studios,” commented Mr. Michael Chi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Perfect World. “This strategic acquisition will add attractive game titles to our portfolio, which will help us further penetrate into the U.S. and global online game markets.  More importantly, Cryptic Studios’ highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities.  We deem this as another noteworthy achievement of our global expansion efforts.”

“With the acquisition by Perfect World, Cryptic has found a strong platform for continued expansion into free to play business model and growth in the global marketplace,” said Jim Wilson, CEO of Atari. “The divestiture of Cryptic is in line with Atari’s continued focus on key owned and third-party strategic franchises and expansion into emerging game platforms.”

China, Beijing & USA, Los Gatos, CA

 

 

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GameFly acquires Direct2Drive.com from IGN Entertainment

May 29, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

GameFly, the online video game rental subscription service, has acquired IGN Entertainment‘s Direct2Drive.com (D2D), a digital distributer of video games. D2Dwill continue to offer PC and Mac titles for gamers to purchase and download digitally. As part of the transaction, IGN will gain a minority equity stake in GameFly, but will play no direct role in GameFly’s operations or governance.  News Corporation will take an observer seat on GameFly’s board. Terms of the deal are not disclosed.

“We’re very excited to bring the D2D team onboard at GameFly and expand our ability to deliver games to consumers,” saidDavid Hodess, CEO of GameFly. “Only GameFly can offer a complete library of physical and digital games for the PC, Mac and consoles in one place.”

“GameFly has been an innovator in the video games industry, and it continues to evolve with the expansion of its digital offering. We’re excited to continue working and partnering with GameFly moving forward,” said Jorge Espinel, EVP of Strategy and Corporate Development for News Corp. Digital Media Group and GameFly’s board observer.

USA, Los Angeles, CA

 

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