DeNA Buys Game Firm and IPhone Application-Maker Ngmoco for $400 Million
DeNA to Buy Iphone Application-Maker for $400 Million
Ngmoco.com via Bloomberg
DeNA will acquire all of San Francisco-based Ngmoco using cash, shares and warrants, the Japanese company said in a statement.
DeNA will acquire all of San Francisco-based Ngmoco using cash, shares and warrants, the Japanese company said in a statement. Source: Ngmoco.com via Bloomberg
DeNA Co., a Japanese social game developer, agreed to pay about $400 million to buy an unlisted U.S. maker of games that can be played on Apple Inc.’s iPhone as part of its overseas expansion.
DeNA will acquire all of San Francisco-based Ngmoco using cash, shares and warrants, the Japanese company said in a statement today. The transaction is slated to close on Nov. 9.
A combination with Ngmoco, which this quarter will introduce games for phones that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, will create the world’s largest mobile social games platform company, according to the statement. The deal is DeNA’s third involving a U.S. company in the past 12 months, including last month’s purchase of Gameview Studios Llc.
Ngmoco’s shareholders and employees will get $300 million in cash and securities and are entitled to additional consideration of as much as $100 million if performance goals are met, according to the statement from the Tokyo-based company. Ngmoco was founded two years ago by former Electronic Arts Inc. executive Neil Young.
DeNA fell 1.6 percent to close at 2,373 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange before the announcement. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 2.1 percent.
The deal is designed to help DeNA create a unified platform that will let developers make games that run on both Apple and Android operating systems, according to the statement. Ngmoco will also help DeNA to make its Mobage Town gaming site into a global service, the Japanese company said.
Walt Disney, Google
DeNA last month bought Gameview, a Mountain View, California-based maker of free-play games for mobile platforms. In October, the company acquired 20 percent of Aurora Feint Inc., a Burlingame, California-based gaming network with more than 29 million users, according to its website.
Ngmoco was funded in part by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, whose earlier investments included Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. The venture capital firm’s return from the Ngmoco sale roughly pays off its initial $100 million iFund, which was created to invest in companies making applications for Apple’s mobile devices, said Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Park, California-based Kleiner Perkins.
With more processing power and better graphics than their predecessors, smartphones are eating into the game-console market dominated by Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. Shipments of game-capable mobile phones are set to rise 11 percent to 1.27 billion this year, according to market researcher iSuppli.
In July, Walt Disney Co. agreed to buy Playdom Inc. for $563.2 million, acquiring the second-biggest maker of games played on Facebook Inc. and MySpace websites. It had also bought Tapulous Inc., a developer of music-related games for the iPod and the iPad.
In August, Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, acquired social-gaming company Slide Inc., as part of an effort to keep pace with Facebook.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Clenfield in Tokyo at jclenfield@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
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