Mobile gaming app developer ngmoco:) acquired by DeNA

By Laura Khalil October 12, 2010

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Together, this acquisition will create the world’s largest mobile social games platform company.

“This acquisition cements DeNA’s leadership position in the U.S. We’re building the largest mobile social gaming platform in the world and populating it with incredible games and services.”

ngmoco’s shareholders and employees will receive US$300 million in cash and securities. They are eligible for another $100 million, contingent upon hitting certain performance milestones.

“In ngmoco and its team we see a lot of the same talent and dynamic traction that we have in the Japanese market, making the merger a perfect fit for us,” said Tomoko Namba, founder and CEO, DeNA. “This acquisition cements DeNA’s leadership position in the U.S. We’re building the largest mobile social gaming platform in the world and populating it with incredible games and services.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, and with studios in New York and Portland, ngmoco was founded in 2008 by games industry veterans Neil Young, Bob Stevenson, Alan Yu and Joe Keene. ngmoco’s games are played more than 50 million minutes a day and have been downloaded more than 60 million times on Apple’s iOS devices, resulting in 20 top 10 applications. The company’s Plus+ social network has over 13.5 million registered users, with more than 50 million friend connections and has been installed more than 86 million times. In September, ngmoco announced its commitment to the Android platform with games and services arriving in the fourth quarter.

“We are delighted to be joining forces with DeNA, a company that we have admired and aspired to,” said Neil Young, founder and CEO, ngmoco. “The opportunity to be a part of creating the number one social mobile game platform company and to benefit from the unique learning and knowledge that DeNA possesses is an amazing way to accelerate our vision for gaming.”

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Laura is a tech reporter for Digital Trends, the editor of Dorkbyte and a science blogger for PBS. She's been named one of…

Gaming

Updated Steam mobile app lets you download games from your phone

The Steam remote mobile app shows details for Control.

Valve has released the updated Steam mobile app on Android and iOS, revamped with improvements to its framework and user interface design. The new and improved app also comes with new features, including the ability to download Steam games remotely from your phone and log in with a QR code.

Introducing the updated Steam Mobile app

Mobile

Meta found over 400 mobile apps ‘designed to steal’ Facebook logins

Social media mobile apps on a smartphone screen, all on a textured gray fabric background.

If you frequently use your Facebook login to sign into new mobile apps you've installed, you may want to pay attention to Meta's latest announcement.

On Friday, Facebook's parent company Meta published a blog post written by its Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich, and Ryan Victory, a Malware Discovery and Detection engineer at Meta. The post detailed Meta's discovery of over 400 mobile apps "that target people across the internet to steal their Facebook login information." Essentially, Meta found hundreds of mobile apps that were "designed to steal" the login information of Facebook users by having those users log in to these apps with their Facebook login information.

Gaming

PlayStation and Xbox are betting big on mobile, and for good reason

The Backbone One - PlayStation Edition has a phone in it.

Sony surprised PlayStation fans August 29 when it acquired Savage Game Studios, a mobile game developer. As part of this announcement, Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst unveiled the company's new PlayStation Studios Mobile Division that "will operate independently from our console development and focus on innovative, on-the-go experiences based on new and existing PlayStation IP." The news comes in the wake of the Backbone One -- PlayStation Edition's launch and Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition that will also bring Candy Crush developer King and Blizzard mobile games into Xbox Game Studios. It's clear that the big console players are investing more than ever in mobile.
That might sound like a shocking development, especially for hardcore console and PC players who aren't fans of mobile games for various reasons, including predatory monetization practices. But when you take a step back and look at the reality of mobile gaming, it's entirely clear why two of the biggest names in console gaming want to spread their reach to an even more global and lucrative market -- especially as overseas markets further embrace mobile as a gaming platform of choice.
Finding their knack for mobile
Focusing on console and PC gaming makes it easy to forget just how big mobile gaming is. After Microsoft's announcement of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili told Digital Trends that while consumer spending on PC and console gaming is predicted to reach $62 billion this year, mobile game players will spend $111 billion overall in 2022. "If we look at our forecast for 2025, we expect the spend on console and PC games to remain relatively flat," Jijiashvili said. "However, mobile gaming is set to grow considerably." Jijiashvili's estimations also don't even consider cloud gaming, which is prevalent on mobile and is expected to grow in the coming years.

Jijiashvili highlighted that console gaming would stay healthy but somewhat stagnant as players from previous generations upgrade to PS5 and Xbox Series X. Meanwhile, he says PC gaming is falling out of favor in Asia, highlighting that a game like PUBG sees most resources assigned to the mobile game before they come over to the PC and console versions. Before the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Jijiashvili believed Xbox "desperately lacked" a strong foothold in the mobile gaming market, and it's easy for us to see that the same currently applies to PlayStation prior to the Savage Game Studios acquisition. For how important PlayStation and Xbox were to console players, companies like King and Zynga meant much more to mobile gamers for a long time.
On top of that, mobile gaming also expands these game companies' reach to an even bigger audience. Yes, over 20 million PS5 and 117 million PS4 consoles are out there, but especially in Asian markets, mobile games will give PlayStation and Xbox much more exposure. Of course, Jijiashvili points out that just having mobile studios doesn't immediately guarantee success, as Asian mobile players favor "more hardcore games from the battle royale and MOBA genres, which have achieved great popularity and deliver strong performance." Still, Xbox and PlayStation will soon have a stronger foothold than ever on platforms and in regions where gamers playing on PC or console isn't as prevalent.
It's worth noting that both Xbox and PlayStation do have some history on mobile -- just not very successful ones. Microsoft had Windows Phones, tried to shove SmartGlass features into early Xbox One exclusives, and is currently making great strides in console gaming via the cloud on mobile. Meanwhile, PlayStation franchises like Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, and even Knack (Knack's Quest, ladies and gentlemen) got mobile games under the "PlayStation Mobile" banner in the 2010s. These acquisitions showed renewed interest in developing games exclusively made for mobile. While we can't predict Microsoft's long-term plans for King as the Activision Blizzard deal still isn't finished, Hulst made Savage Game Studios' position within PlayStation Studios very clear.