A nice little surprise regarding news and OpenFeint this morning. We didn’t even know talks were under way for any sort of purchase regarding OpenFeint but apparently there were. Today it is official that GREE, a Japanese company in the Social gaming sector, has purchases OpenFeint for an easy $104 million.
So with this purchase on hand, what changes are expected to come with OpenFeint? Not a whole lot, at least that we will see in the near future that is. As it stands, the entire staff at OpenFeint will keep doing what they are doing and, in fact, will continue with plans to open more offices in other locations internationally and doubling their staff.
GREE is the leading social gaming company overin Japan and a purchase like this gives them a direct shot in the arm to the US market when it comes to mobile gaming and bringing their titles over to the US. If you take GREE’s user base and add it to OpenFeint, it will make them the largest mobile gaming social network in the world with over 100 million users. However, GREE does not plan to merge with OpenFeint and combine all their services under one name but instead will keep each unit functioning in order to better tailor their products to each region.
This is just another example of how mobile gaming is becoming quite the force. Last year we saw Chillingo get bought by EA, Ngmoco get bought by DeNA and other big deals all revolving around mobile gaming and social mobile gaming. From all of us here at DroidGamers, we want to say congrats to the entire OpenFeint team!
Website Referenced: TouchArcade
