OCT. 12, 2010 • DeNA, the company behind Mobage Town mobile social game platform in Japan, acquired San Francisco Bay Area iPhone game developer Ngmoco for $400 million. The acquisition was one of the largest ever for an iPhone studio. DeNA’s intends to integrate its Mobage content with Ngmoco’s Plus+ social networking platform. The latter is designed for iPhone Google Android-based mobile phones. For the calendar year,  DeNA’s projected revenue is around ¥48 billion ($588.3 million). The company expects that total to double by the end of its fiscal year.

Impact: We think that much of this acquisition was driven by the desire to bring free-to-play virtual item models to mobile.  Ngmoco has built up key technology with their Plus+ platform that allows the selling of virtual items in mobile games. Free-to-play gaming companies in Asia are very interested in what’s happening in the mobile marketplace,

The free-to-play companies in Asia have nailed the business model for virtual good based PC games like MapleStory . What they all need is a coherent mobile strategy to both feed their PC games and to launch new types of free-to-play mobile games. The opportunity to retain players across multiple screens (phone/tablet/PC/TV) and sell them virtual goods wherever they are could be one of the biggest financial opportunities in gaming in the short term.