Will No More Heroes bring the blood and gore to mobile phones for good? That much we doubt. The Japanese creator of what is said to be "the social game with the most blood," Grasshopper Manufacture, has inked a deal with social game giant DeNA. The partnership has created a new company called Grasshopper Social Network Service, and company CEO Goichi Suda--aka Suda 51--sounds psyched.
"Our new venture with DeNA will allow us to explore creative ways to bring Grasshopper Manufacture's universe to a new world of players," Suda said, according to Gamasutra. "Mobage's world-class entertainment network and the power of social mobile games will unlock new types of experiences for our fans."
The deal will result in a number of mobile social games created (in addition to the three already in the making) solely for DeNA and now ngmoco's Mobage platform for smartphones. Grasshopper Social Network Service will begin operations in Japan this November, and will bring a number of new mobile social games to Japanese mobile smartphones and abroad.
No More Heroes Royal, Frog Minutes, Humans vs Zombies and Alien Busters--Grasshopper Manufacture's existing projects for Mobage--will all shift to this new joint venture once set up. DeNA has some big names on its side in this battle for mobile social dominance. Just last week, the company announced the first Final Fantasy social game with Square Enix. Look, if this means we get to see the social action fest that much sooner, then go at it, Suda.
Do you think Grasshopper Manufacture is making a good move getting this deep into mobile social games? Which of the companies announced social games are you most psyched for?
Showing posts with label ngmoco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ngmoco. Show all posts
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
NBA Legend creator Lionside bought out by Ngmoco [Updated]
Update: An ngmoco spokesperson confirmed the news to ISG: "We can confirm that ngmoco has acquired the Lionside team. The terms of the agreement are undisclosed. We are very excited to have Lionside join the ngmoco and DeNA family. They are working on new products for the Mobage social gaming platform, bringing their passion and experience to our continuously expanding first party development capabilities."
Neither side seems to want anyone to know about it just yet, but signs are pointing toward a buyout in the works between ngmoco and Lionside. Inside Social Games reports that, according to numerous Lionside employee Linkedin pages, a shuttered website, an inactive Twitter account and Facebook games that simply aren't operational, ngmoco may have acquired the San Francisco-based company.
A tipster pointed ISG toward the Linkedin pages of Lionside VP of Business Operations Michael McBride and European Account Manager Kane Curran, both of which read that Lionside has been acquired by ngmoco. Not to mention that Lionside CEO Brandon Barber's Google+ profile reads, "Lionside & ngmoco marketing and product guy."
To add to the mountain of evidence that Lionside has potentially been acquired by ngmoco, the company's official website has been taken down. And neither NBA Legend nor Lionside Football are available to play, the former of which is "being enhanced," according to a page that has replaced the actual game on Facebook.
Unfortunately, both games have been performing poorly, garnering a mere total of just over 367,000 monthly players, according to AppData. So, this begs the question: If Lionside has been acquired by ngmoco, just what would the studio be up to in its new capacity? Ngmoco, since it was purchased by Japanese social gaming giant DeNA earlier this year, has been working diligently on a global version of the publisher's Mobage mobile social games network, which was just released for Android.
So, our best guess is that Lionside would be working on mobile social games to be played on the Mobage network, though it doesn't seem that Lionside has ever worked in mobile games as a company (official information from the company is unavailable at the moment). We've contacted Lionside for comment.
Are you convinced that ngmoco has purchased Lionside? What do you think or hope the studio will do for ngmoco and DeNA as a result? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment
Neither side seems to want anyone to know about it just yet, but signs are pointing toward a buyout in the works between ngmoco and Lionside. Inside Social Games reports that, according to numerous Lionside employee Linkedin pages, a shuttered website, an inactive Twitter account and Facebook games that simply aren't operational, ngmoco may have acquired the San Francisco-based company.
A tipster pointed ISG toward the Linkedin pages of Lionside VP of Business Operations Michael McBride and European Account Manager Kane Curran, both of which read that Lionside has been acquired by ngmoco. Not to mention that Lionside CEO Brandon Barber's Google+ profile reads, "Lionside & ngmoco marketing and product guy."
To add to the mountain of evidence that Lionside has potentially been acquired by ngmoco, the company's official website has been taken down. And neither NBA Legend nor Lionside Football are available to play, the former of which is "being enhanced," according to a page that has replaced the actual game on Facebook.
Unfortunately, both games have been performing poorly, garnering a mere total of just over 367,000 monthly players, according to AppData. So, this begs the question: If Lionside has been acquired by ngmoco, just what would the studio be up to in its new capacity? Ngmoco, since it was purchased by Japanese social gaming giant DeNA earlier this year, has been working diligently on a global version of the publisher's Mobage mobile social games network, which was just released for Android.
So, our best guess is that Lionside would be working on mobile social games to be played on the Mobage network, though it doesn't seem that Lionside has ever worked in mobile games as a company (official information from the company is unavailable at the moment). We've contacted Lionside for comment.
Are you convinced that ngmoco has purchased Lionside? What do you think or hope the studio will do for ngmoco and DeNA as a result? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment
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