HandyGames also open to acquisition

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

Following the interview with Karl Woods, we started to look around which other mid-size independent publishers might be open to acquisition. After asking several people in the industry, our focus is on HandyGames. In the Mobile Media magazine of the 11th of August, they already said to de talking around.

Christopher Kassulke, CEO of HandyGames didn’t want to go into details, but did tell us when an acquisition makes sense for the company, they might consider it. However they are surely not interested in just the first one that pops up with a bag of money. The future of the company is the prime objective if anything happens in this field.

Elspa’s chart for March

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »

These are the most popular games according to the Elspa counts.

1. Glu – Sonic the Hedgehog
2. EA Mobile

HandyGames into social gaming

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Connected Gaming | No Comments »

HandyGames recently launched their newest wap game on Vodafone Germany. The game is all about predicting the results for the German premier league called the "Bundesliga" and is called "LigaTipper". Within the game, players are able to compare their speculations on the outcome of the league to other experts.

"We are convinced that this feature predicting sports results will become some sort of social gaming," said Markus Kassulke, CEO of HandyGames. "Our concept makes use of all the advantages of the mobile internet."

We asked Christopher Kassulke, CEO of HandyGames, what future plans HandyGames has to focus on community and wap gaming.

"HandyGames see WAP as the perfect match for community and social gaming cause you are online and it works on 99,9% of the handsets out there no matter if you use a black and white, a non J2ME device, an i-mode, UMTS or simple WAP device. We just started and we see new tippers coming in every day and its not stopping. Also non-gamers are taking part in that community. We will bring that social gaming or community gaming to several other operators now also with other sports of course soccer is not a big topic in the US but its so flexible that we can use it for every other league system also fantasy leagues."

CTIA will be mobile gaming MECCA

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Events & Conferences | No Comments »

CTIA this year will devote itself even more to mobile gaming as “MECCA for games” is planned to take place at the venue on the 11th of September. For a complete listing of the sessions held, please look at the billboard site.

Karl Woods: Kiloo waiting to be acquired

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »

MobileIndustry.biz yesterday posted their long awaited interview with Karl Woods. Ok, it’s only part one of the interview, but it’s getting interesting from the beginning. As Karl explains, they are currently busy polishing up the company to make it ready for acquisition by one of the current big boys who need experience in the mobile gaming market. As example, Karl stated Activision, one of the major pc/console publishers who doesn’t have it’s own mobile department.

Goldenpalace talks mobile

August 31st, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Gambling | No Comments »

Goldenpalace sent out a press release about their device porting. They claim to support 800 handsets, ranging from J2me to platforms like Palm and Blackberry. More interesting though is the fact they also talk about popularity of casino games. Though poker is becoming widely popular, their main business is on blackjack and the good old slots as they are quick to play games. The most popular gaming device range is the Blackberry series.

Interview with Glu’s Greg Ballard

August 29th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »

MobileIndustry.biz did an extensive interview with Glu‘s Greg Ballard. The interview started off about the integration of Ifone into Glu, but also handles the departure of Enda Carey from Ifone to Telcogames. The only thing we miss though is what is going to happen with the Sonic license as Sega is busy creating their own distribution network. Ok, it’s no hard guess what’s going to happen. Still it would be nice to know something officially.

GCDC: Infospace announces new Tomb Raider game

August 25th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

At the second last day of the GC in Leipzich, Infospace took the liberty to announce their newest Tomb Raider game which they licensed from Eidos. The game will be called Tomb Raider: Puzzle Paradox. This fourth title from Infospace follows the previous series of Tomb Raider games they released in 2002.

Vivendi launches Black Hawk Down

August 25th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | No Comments »

Following a multilicense deal with PC developer Novalogic, Vivendi’s mobile pedartment announced the launch of Delta Force – Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre. The game is inspired by the 2001 blockbuster from Ridley Scott.

Excite Japan to start selling in Europe

August 24th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Brand Licensing | 6 Comments »

Ozura Mobile just announced they have successfully concluded a deal with Excite Japan to bring their mobile games into Europe. Ozura expects this deal to value around $20 million.

"Ozura Mobile has been chosen as the preferred international mobile game distributor due to its well established presence in the global mobile gaming industry," said Ozura Mobile’s chief executive officer, Lion Peh.

Ozura expects to be able to present their games to 150 million subscribers in their network trough their own content platform called FunlogiX.

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