First quarter game investments and acquisitions gather steam
The consolidation of companies in the social game market has begun, according to first-quarter data gathered by game-focused investment bank Digi-Capital. In the first quarter of 2012, 30 merger and acquisition deals generated $1.7 billion in transaction value at an average of $57 million, the report said. Social gambling (driven by the hopes of changes to U.S. laws on online gambling) has emerged as a driving force for social games mergers and acquisitions.
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Casino game makers outline a winning strategy on Facebook
International Game Technology (IGT) plans to use their acquisition of DoubleDown Interactive as a tool to grow their brand with younger audiences. DoubleDown Interactive is the maker of DoubleDown Casino, one of the most popular gambling-themed games on Facebook. “Facebook is almost the same business as casinos,” said Chris Satchell, CTO and EVP of research and development at IGT. “Facebook has real estate and customers, just like the casinos.” IGT sees Facebook as a way to introduce casino games to a younger crowd, who are more likely to go clubbing at a casino than play highly profitable slot games.
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Check us out! Karma was covered in Entrevestor this week. Entrevestor is a great site for the latest on investment, innovation and entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada and we were thrilled to be featured in it.
DrawSomething hits mobile game record as it passes 50M downloads
DrawSomething, the Pictionary-style app that Zynga acquired with its $180 million purchase of OMGPOP, has surpassed 50 million downloads. In just 50 days, the title has become the fastest-growing original mobile game of all time. The game regained its top spot as the No. 1 paid app in the App Store, retaking the title from Angry Birds space. More than 6 billion drawings have been created.
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