February 5th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
CDC Games, a business unit of CDC Corporation, has announced to be increasing their investment in Japan based BBMF.
BBMF is one of Japan’s bigger content producers and holds a big catalogue of online mobile games amongst many other forms of mobile entertainment like mobile comics.
The investment will allow CDC games to deliver future online mobile games via 3G networks and expand its geographic reach. With multiple rounds of investment completed in BBMF, CDC now owns approximately 20 percent of the company with a total investment of approximately (U.S.) $10 million.
Japan is one of the early adopters of 3G with more than 60 percent of mobile subscribers already using 3G handsets. The 3G content market in Japan is projected to reach (U.S.)$1.2 billion by 2008.
Jeff Longoria, president of CDC Games International, said, ‘We believe that online games will increasingly be delivered in broadband wireless as well as wired environments. This investment provides CDC with a beachhead in the mobile market, a proven 3G mobile platform, and access to one of the world’s largest online games markets, Japan. As part of this investment, CDC Games plans to use BBMF’s 3G mobile platform to launch future online games targeted for the 3G mobile markets in Japan and China. The mobile comics offered by BBMF provide a foundation for future game development not just for the Japanese market but globally. CDC intends to facilitate BBMF’s expansion outside of Japan as well.’
The investments in BBMF are part of the US $100 million Online Games Developer Partner Program of CDC Games Studio. The program was established to place investments in strategic game development partners to accelerate the development of new and original online games for the China market and additional target geographies including Japan and the US.
