CEO Jason Citron promises developers 'we are stepping on the gas pedal'.
Japanese mobile social gaming firm Gree has followed the lead of its rival DeNA by buying a Western mobile social gaming network. While DeNA splashed out $403 million on ngmoco and its Plus+ community, Gree has opted to pay $104 million for OpenFeint.
The latter's CEO Jason Citron has posted a letter to OpenFeint developers on the company's website explaining the likely impact of the acquisition, seeking to reassure them that OpenFeint's execs will not be taking the money and running.
"Simply put, we are stepping on the gas pedal. The entire OpenFeint team is staying on and will continue building the platform that we launched together two years ago," he writes.
"With Gree’s expertise and financial backing, you’ll quickly see the benefits of this collaboration. Expect to see faster SDK updates, awesome new products, and network improvements. We’ll build more global distribution channels like we have done in China with The9 - opening new markets for your games."
Gree's mobile social gaming network includes more than 500 games, with more than 25 million users signed up.
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"At Gree, we are socializing the next evolution of games and, as the best-in-class US-based mobile social network, OpenFeint is the ideal partner for us to offer the best mobile social games to the largest global audience," says Gree CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka in a statement.
With ngmoco now part of DeNA's global expansion, and OpenFeint set to spearhead Gree's international efforts, attention may turn now to the third big Western social mobile gaming community, Scoreloop, as a potential acquisition target.
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