July 16th, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
Gendai Games, creators of the GameSalad mobile game creation tool have announced to have successfully closed their series A round of VC funding, lead by DFJ Mercury.
The round, lead by DFJ Mercury, included Steamboat Ventures, DFJ Frontier and FF Asset Management as well as individual investors Paul Bricault, Paige Craig, Tom McInerny, Josh Resnick and Mark Suster.
The GameSalad tool has been downloaded 70.000 times, which resulted in 800 new games on Apple’s App Store.
“Gendai Games provides a paradigm shift in casual game development,” said Blair Garrou, managing director, DFJ Mercury. “Our firm is attracted to the simplicity and elegance of the GameSalad toolset, and is impressed by the company’s traction to date.”
“Brands are continually looking to extend their customer experience into games and other forms of interactive media,” said Beau Laskey, managing director of Steamboat Ventures. “We believe Gendai Games provides a compelling option for creative professionals and developers to dramatically accelerate and simplify the development of sophisticated casual games, which helps to reduce total costs and turn-around time for development studios.”
“Games are a powerful means of interactive expression. We believe that game creation should be democratized so that anyone from any age or culture can participate,” said Michael Agustin, CEO and co-founder of Gendai Games. “With this new round of funding, Gendai Games looks to expand our talented team, and take advantage of the ever-expanding capabilities of mobile computing.”
