Archive for the ‘VP’ tag
Ngmoco Raises Another $25 Million and Buys Freeverse
With an additional $25 million in funding recently secured, it was revealed mere moments ago that acquired , the developer/publisher responsible for many different games that have wound up in the top iTunes charts including Skee-Ball, Flick Fishing, and others. Freeverse was originally founded as a Mac shareware company in 1994 but has made a very successful transition to iPhone game development. This new round of funding brings ngmoco's outside investment total to $40.6 million, a staggering amount of money for an iPhone game startup to be fueled by.
With the previous acquisition of Miraphonic, creators of Epic Pet Wars and other Epic Wars games, ngmoco has set their sights on the "freemium" market and have already seen two major successes in both TouchPets and Eliminate. Both games have been installed 9 million times and are played by hundreds of thousands of people every day.
Ngmoco plans on moving Freeverse's games to a similar free-to-play model, then make money off various in-app purchases much like ngmoco's upcoming games We Rule and GodFinger. They plan on releasing around 20 new games this year, and expect Freeverse to produce just as many.
We have an interview scheduled with Freeverse VP Colin Smith first thing tomorrow morning, and plan on getting to the bottom of what (if any) major changes we will see from Freeverse aside from switching to the new payment model. Freeverse was responsible for recent iPhone games Parachute Ninja, Zombie Cannon Carnage, and NBA Hotshot.
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‘Rolando 3′ Put to Rest as Ngmoco Goes ‘Freemium’
If it weren't obvious by now, ngmoco has completely shifted gears from their former business model of offering "premium" priced games to free to play "freemium" games. Eliminate [Free] and Touch Pets Dogs [Free] were just the start of the pricing trend that will likely permeate the rest of the ngmoco game lineup for the foreseeable future.
A number of things can be attributed to this shift, in , he cited 50% to 90% piracy rates, and discussed the increasing difficulty in selling iPhone games at a $9.99 price point as the market drives itself to rock-bottom 99¢ pricing. Free games can't be pirated, and the explosion of Facebook gaming, as well as the success of the various Epic Wars and other similar games on the App Store solidified the validity of the free to play model before Eliminate even launched.
The unfortunate side effect of all this is that Rolando 3 as it originally was envisioned is left as the odd man out, per , founder and CEO of ngmoco. Since ngmoco currently has no plans to release games that aren't free, the Rolando franchise has been sent back to the drawing board until they can figure out a sensible way to deliver a Rolando game as a free to play experience.
Even though there may not be a Rolando 3 anytime soon, I still recommend trying out the existing Rolando games on the App Store if you haven't already. The original Rolando [$2.99 / Free] as well as Rolando 2 [$4.99 / Free] are both absolutely fantastic games, making excellent use of both the touch and tilt controls of the iPhone.
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