ngmoco may be for sale. . . or maybe not. According to Techcrunch, Japan’s DeNA is considering acquiring ngmoco for $400 million.
ngmoco may be for sale. . . or maybe not. According to Techcrunch, Japan’s DeNA is considering acquiring ngmoco for $400 million.
That’s a lot of money for the state of where ngmoco is right now. True, ngmoco is successfully releasing a lot of social style games for the iPhone, iPad, and Android such as We Rule and WeCity. They have a strong investment team and just took an investment from Google. Given what I am guessing their revenues are now though, $400 million sounds kind of pricey. It’s not over-the-top, though, and an acquisition of ngmoco would overnight make DeNA a global leader in cross-platform social games.
Of course, this is just speculation. If it’s in Techcrunch, there are definitely talks happening. The question is whether its an investor or board member from ngmoco leaking the information to sweeten the deal (or kill it) or whether it’s someone from DeNA releasing the information to pressure the ngmoco board.
If this deal does happen, it’ll be DeNA’s third M & A deal of the year, after the buy-out of social game company Gameview and an investment in Astro Ape. With Zynga and CrowdStar expanding into Japan, DeNA is turning the tables and encroaching on the US market to emerge as global player in social games. Irony, or as they say in Japanese, “hiniku.”
