GREE continues its plans for global expansion with the acquisition of Funzio, a mobile game company focused on mid-core game titles, for $210 million in an all cash deal.
The acquisition of Funzio adds to GREE’s aggressive plans to bring more games to its mobile platform, which currently has over 7,500 games and 190 million players. By adding Funzio’s titles, GREE adds roughly 20 million more players to its platform. It also adds an additional 100 employees to its new San Francisco 41,000 sq/ft studio. The company has offices in Tokyo, London, Singapore, Seoul, Beijing, and Amsterdam.
Funzio’s titles include “Crime City,” “Modern War,” and “Kingdom Age”. The company’s officers and founders, Ken Chiu (CEO) and Anil Dharni (COO) will join GREE International as Senior Vice Presidents while Ram Gudavalli (CTO) and Andy Keidel (VP, Engineering) will join as Vice Presidents.
Back in April of last year, GREE purchased OpenFeint for $104 million to create a mobile platform for its games. Since then, GREE has been partnering and making investments at a blistering pace, and since the beginning of 2012 alone has announced the following investments and partnerships:
> Partnership with Crowdstar and iWin for exclusive deal on casual games for the GREE platform;
> Investment in IUGO Mobile Entertainment from Vancouver for development technologies such as IUGO Games Library, IRender 3D Engine, IUGO Mesh Social Game Engine;
> Investment in Wizcorp a Tokyo-based company focused on HTML5 game development;
> Global partnership with Dentsu for future venture investments and global network support;
> Partnership with LEVEL-5 for an exclusive deal to bring three games to the GREE platform;
> Business relationship with ICS who owns FreeAppADay.com. The collaboration will support developers through the “FAAD” discovery channel for iOS games;
> Agreement with Ubisoft for exclusivity of Assassin’s Creed title on the GREE platform;
> Partnership with Gameloft to bring Gang Domination, a social card game, to the GREE platform;
> Partnership with 11 Chinese and Korean social mobile developers (see list of companies below);
> Partnerships with technology partners to support GREE Platform. (see list of technologies and companies in chart below);
> Partnership with RightScale for multi-cloud management system;
> Business Alliance with Korean smartphone developer Mobicle, a leading Korean online developer with expertise in real-time simulations and 3D;
The following diagram and list highlights the breadth of the technology partnerships GREE made back in February:
| (1) Localization | DIGITAL Hearts Co.,Ltd. Katalyst Lab Inc. Keywords International Limited Lionbridge Technologies Poletowin Pitcrew Holdings, Inc. |
| (2) Server-side Infrastructure | Amazon Data Services Japan FreeBit Co.,Ltd. GMO Internet, Inc. IDC Frontier Inc. Microsoft Japan Co.,Ltd. RightScale®, Inc. |
| (3) Debug | DIGITAL Hearts Co.,Ltd. Poletowin Pitcrew Holdings, Inc. VeriServe Corporation |
| (4) User Support | BELLSYSTEM24, Inc. E-Guardian Inc. GaiaX Co.Ltd. ISAO Corporation Poletowin Pitcrew Holdings, Inc. transcosmos inc. |
Also in February came its sweeping partnerships with 11 companies from China and Korea that will support the GREE Platform:
| Company Name (Headquarter Location) | Game Title* |
|---|---|
| Beijing ASTEPGAME Co., Ltd. (Beijing, China) | Three Kingdoms TD – Fate of Wei |
| Beijing Pearlinpalm Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Beijing, China) | Pearl Heroes – The Three Kingdoms |
| Boyaa Interactive International Limited (Hong Kong) | Boyaa Texas Poker |
| Chukong Technology Co., Ltd. (PunchBox) (Beijing, China) | Fishing Joy X |
| Company 100, Inc. (Gyeonggii, South Korea) | Buddy Rush / Operation:Cross Counter |
| Haypi Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) | Haypi Kingdom |
| Hoolai Game Limited (Beijing, China) | Rise Of Olympia |
| iFree Studio Limited (Hong Kong) | Emross War |
| Pictosoft Co., Ltd. (Seoul, South Korea) | Stylish Sprint |
| Shanghai MUHE Network Technology Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) | Tap Three Kingdoms |
| Something Big Technology Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) | Sanguo Mobile |
With net sales of $540 million for Q2, GREE’s revenues are also on a blistering trajectory. And at this pace GREE does not seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.
Of course the key now will be to see if the company can maintain the high ARPUs it has had in Japan as it moves into international markets. Obviously, the partnerships and investments are safeguards to ensure strong regional content for its regional markets.
