Investors have started to look closely at cloud playgrounds. The German firm Ringier Digital Ventures, together with a group of investors, invested $ 3 million in AirConsole. The latter allows you to play multiplayer games without installation.
What is AirConsole?
The developers position the service primarily as a cloud game console for local multiplayer.
It works in a non-standard way. The console itself is a desktop browser, and smartphones are used as gamepads.
In the browser, players choose a game, and the platform generates codes for entry. It is necessary to drive them into the AirConsole mobile application and users find themselves in the same session.
All games are played on the platform servers.
The service was launched by a small team of developers from Zurich back in September 2015. But so far I have not achieved success. Its MAU is 5 million.
One of the central problems of the service today remains a small library of games.
Who invested the money and what will it be used for?
We are talking about a $3 million deal. The money came from non-targeted investors. The main amount was invested by Ringier Digital Ventures. There were also tranches from Swiss Founders Fund, EquityPitcher Ventures and Alpana Ventures. None of these companies have invested in gaming startups before.
This is not the first investment for AirConsole. Earlier, at the sowing stages (the current one is positioned as a series “A”), the company has already received $4.5 million. The current transfer brought the total investments received to $7.5 million, CrunchBase reports.
The amount raised in November will be used to solve two problems:
- increasing the game library;
- development of relations with television operators and producers.
Investors also hope that the amount invested by them will increase the audience of the service and its games.
Background
Investors’ interest in AirConsole can be explained by the activity of big players in this direction. Google, Microsoft and, according to rumors, Amazon are now bringing their own cloud gaming solutions to the market, looking back at the success of streaming video services (primarily Netflix). As long as this segment of gaming platforms is not oversaturated with supply (as well as demand), investors could count the asset AirConsole is interesting.
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