October 5th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
Following a strategic investment from ARM, developer Ideaworks3D has now announced that the company will split up in Ideaworks Labs and Ideaworks Game Studio (and so it loses the 3D).
The Ideaworks Labs company will continue to develop their Airplay technology. This middleware proved to be very successful for the games developer.
Ideaworks Game Studio will go back to the roots of the company and will not only be developing mobile games, but also focus on PSPgo, DSi, XBLA, PSN and more. Needless to say, they will utilize the Airplay middleware for that.
The CEO and CTD of Ideaworks3D will head to Ideaworks Labs whereas studio director Rob Henry will be heading Ideaworks Game Studio.
“Ideaworks has been licensing ground-breaking software products for over 10 years, to blue-chip companies including Intel, Autodesk, Nokia and Texas Instruments” said Alex Caccia, CEO Ideaworks Labs. “Along the way, we formed an applications development capability that built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality native mobile games. With the two businesses now so well established, the time is right to make a formal separation and let each organization pursue its own destiny.”
Rob Hendry, Head of Ideaworks Game Studio, added “Our Studio has an unparalleled track record of building AAA games for iPhone, smartphone and other platforms. We have worked with publishers including EA Mobile, Konami, and Capcom on key franchises including Metal Gear Solid, Need for Speed and The Sims, and have won numerous awards over recent years. We are now able to offer our customers an efficient solution for developing and deploying content across iPhone and other digital distribution channels such as Sony PSP Go and Nintendo DSi.”
Tim Closs, CTO Ideaworks Labs commented “One of the reasons Airplay SDK succeeds where other offerings fail is that it was developed as part of a virtuous circle with an applications development studio that was servicing real customers. That evolution was hugely valuable, and has lead to a battle-hardening of the software itself and the associated support and delivery services. The focus for Ideaworks Labs is now to raise awareness of Airplay SDK within the mobile applications development community, and to continue to invest in supporting and extending what is truly a market-leading product that will transform the economics of developing and deploying smartphone applications.”
