ngmoco, the mobile gaming company that was founded by the former EA Games’ executive – Neil Young, announced that it has raised a $25 million series C round and acquired one of the rivals – Freeverse. Institutional Venture Partners led the round, which also saw existing shareholders — Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Partners and Maples Investments — participating. In total, the company has raised $40.6 million to date.
ngmoco has been super active in pushing new games for the iPhone. Simple search found a total of 36 ngmoco apps in the AppStore, though some of the titles are free, lite versions. Their latest gig is GodFinger, the game which they think could compete with the single most popular paid iPhone game – Pocket God.
As for Freeverse, their AppStore listing counts “only” 26 apps, including many of the titles we covered in the past such as Eye Glasses, Days of Thunder, Warpack: Grunts, Slotz Racer and Skee-Ball.
Last year, ngmoco started introducing free-to-play games with in-app purchases. For that endeavor, the company has launched the Plus+ social game network, from where players can buy virtual goods and communicate with each other. The idea is to implement Plus+ in some of Freeverse’s titles as well as open up an SDK for third-party developers.
Having spent many years in the gaming industry, we’ve no doubts Neil knows what he’s doing. Likewise, its investors have also shown quite a solid level of confidence in his ability to innovate and lead the company forward. We’ll keep following ngmoco and the whole mobile gaming ecosystem for that matter. Stay tuned…
[Via: TechCrunch]