Hasbro, which owns IP’s such as Dungeons & Dragons, Transformers and Monopoly, spent $112 million to buy a 70% stake in Backflip Studios.
Hasbro first entered the mobile market a year ago. In June 2012, she signed a contract with Gameloft to develop and publish games based on the animated series My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop. Both projects showed an average box office result.
MY LITTLE PONY – Friendship is Magic (Gameloft)And Hasbro decided to look for a new partner.
Last December, the Transformers: Legends card collectible game from Mobage was released. The result, apparently, pleased Hasbro, because in May DeNA announced the development of two more titles for the IP of an American company: G.I. Joe and Dungeons & Dragons.
G.I. JOE: BATTLEGROUND (Mobage)The first one, by the way, was released last week.
I tried Hasbro and independently release applications. However, she could not achieve success.
And now a company specializing in the production of children’s toys and table entertainment is moving on. It acquires a 70% stake in Backflip Studios for $112 million.
The latter has so far published 58 projects only on iOS, of which three titles can be called more or less famous. This is a physical puzzle Ragdoll Blaster, the original match-3 Shape Shift and DragonVale Farm, the main Backflip bestseller.
DragonVale (Backflip)DragonVale has been sitting in the top ten of American iPhone apps for a year (from September 17, 2011 to September 27, 2012).
In principle, this game still has a good position in the box office top. Now she is in 16th place.
The total number of downloads of Backflip games based in Colorado is 300 million.
Why Hasbro would make such a purchase is a separate question. It is quite possible that very soon we will have a farm with small ponies, which will receive traffic from DragonVale, which is still outdated at the moment.
A source: http://venturebeat.com