Disney Ups the Ante in Social Gaming With Playdom Purchase
Walt Disney has made a major foray into the world of online “social” or casual games, with the acquisition of Playdom, a leading maker of games such as Mobsters for MySpace and Facebook. The media and entertainment giant is paying up to $763 million for the startup, with $200 million of that figure based on the future performance of the company. Fuelled by cash infusions from VC capital funds, including a recent round of $33 million that closed last month, Playdom has acquired a series of game-makers itself over the past year, and is now the fourth-largest gaming player on Facebook behind Zynga, Electronic Arts and CrowdStar.
The Playdom purchase is the latest in a number of moves that Disney has made into social games and online gaming, including the acquisition just a few weeks ago of Tapulous, a maker of popular mobile games for the iPhone such as Tap Tap Revenge. But the purchase of Playdom for three-quarters of a billion dollars is the biggest deal Disney has made in online gaming since it agreed in 2007 to pay $700 million for Club Penguin, a popular online social-gaming network for kids. Half of that price was an “earn-out” based on the site meeting profit targets, however, and it did not make those benchmarks. The fact that Disney was willing to settle for a lower earn-out ratio on Playdom suggests that it sees that market as a better bet than a standalone portal like Club Penguin.
As the leader in the market, Zynga has been getting the lion’s share of investment and deals, including more than $350 million in financing from venture funds such as Japan’s Softbank and Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, which is also a prominent investor in Facebook. But Disney’s acquisition of Playdom shows that there is interest in other players in the sector (game developer Electronic Arts also bought Playfish in November for as much as $400 million), and that entertainment giants such as the House of Mouse see potential for expanding their existing real-world brands into the online and social space.
Whether Disney properties can make the transition into social games remains to be seen, however — most of the games that are popular on Facebook and elsewhere have no existing brand associations. In the future, the entertainment giant may even decide to launch related social games at the same time as it premieres a new movie or other Disney property. The Playdom deal also suggests that the company was eager to make a substantial move into the social-gaming market, since it decided to acquire a developer rather than making its own games from scratch.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): How the Next Zynga Could Reinvent Social Gaming
Here is the original:
Disney Ups the Ante in Social Gaming With Playdom Purchase
U.K. consumers searching for 64GB iPad over other models
Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld UK’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.
Despite the recession and public spending cuts promised by the new government, the top of the range Apple iPad has evoked more interest among U.K. consumers than its lower capacity siblings, according to new research.
The research from price-comparison search engine Twenga discovered that the 64GB iPad, which costs £599 for the Wi-Fi model and £699 for the Wi-Fi and 3G model, was ahead of the 32GB and 16GB iPads in popularity.
Twenga also found the most popular choice of iPad case was made from neoprene, followed by rubber, leather, silicone, then suede.
Top colors for iPad cases are brown followed by pink, purple, green, and grey. The company notes that visitors to Twenga can compare hundreds of iPads and over 8,000 iPad cases from 106 retailers. The site, which brings in more than 25 million visits per month, promises unbiased search results.
Twenga, billed as new-generation shopping search engine, automatically gathers offers from online retailers and displays them in one searchable user-friendly interface.
Founded in 2006 by Bastien Duclaux and Cedric Anes, Twenga runs 14 sites, including the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Russia, the United States, Australia and India displaying more than 230 million offerings from more than 100,000 online shops.
Read more here:
U.K. consumers searching for 64GB iPad over other models
