DigitalChocolate
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Digital Chocolate buys Sandlot Games
Mobile game developer Digital Chocolate, one of the biggest developers on the App Store, has acquired Sandlot Games, makers of Cake Mania and a few other popular App Store titles. Sandlot has offices in Seattle and Eastern Europe, and Digital Chocolate says it plans to use the developer to expand operations in both places. Unfortunately, there's no word on how much the deal is worth. Both companies have seen plenty of app downloads, and have big titles on multiple platforms, including Apple's devices and the PC, so this is likely a substantial acquisition for both sides. As Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins says, "We expect to be the leading game company in at least 5 of the 7 cities where we now have development studios." That said, I don't think this is the last we'll hear of either company. This space is extremely volatile at the moment, and it's just as likely that we'll see Digital Chocolate pick up more developers as it is that we'll see a larger company buy out the whole company if so inclined. [via Touch Arcade]
Digital Chocolate picks up $12 million in funding round, mostly from Intel
Digital Chocolate is one of the biggest iPhone developers that no one talks about much, but maybe that'll change now that the company has picked up a whopping $12 million in venture capital. The company behind a huge amount of iOS titles of all kinds (with more than 100 million mobile downloads total) has raised a total of $54 million so far, and most of this latest round of funding came from Intel, along with a few other venture capital firms. Digital Chocolate seems like a rarity among many App Store developers. While much of the movement on the App Store has been hit-driven, Digital Chocolate instead uses a shotgun approach, delivering lots of different apps that reach their audiences in a variety of different ways. Not all companies can pull a strategy like that off, but whatever Digital Chocolate is doing obviously seems to be working.
GDC 07: Trip Hawkins on Mobile Gaming's "Inferiority Complex"
EA founder, Digital Chocolate CEO, and self-proclaimed "slut for new media" Trip Hawkins opened up the Mobile Gaming track this morning with a talk about the potential of, well, mobile gaming. Hawkins is sick and tired of mobile gaming being a wasteland of second-hand properties, high royalty fees, and retro titles -- games that are downloaded by a tiny portion of cell phone users (5%), and even then only to "waste time.""What we need to do," he says, "is find out how to make mobile a first-rate platform," something people want to pick up to play. If we do, he claims, there are potential billions out there for mobile sales. Hawkins compares the future shift to the success of the Nintendo DS. If Nintendo handled the DS like most developers handle mobile games, he says, we'd have ended up with watered-down ports of Mario games. Instead, DS gameplay have been created with the system's features in mind, and that makes it good. Improvement like that might even clear up what Hawkins calls mobile gaming's major "inferiority complex." Does mobile gaming look fat in that dress? Yes, it does.
