Gree Making Moves in Korea
Gree Takes 6.8% Stake In South Korea Game Developer Mobicle Co. announcement details after the hop: http://bit.ly/AonI4a
GREE and Mobicle announced that they have agreed on a capital and business alliance, where GREE will acquire Mobicle shares through a third party allotment.
GREE is in the process of integrating the brand, user-base, social media and social platform of “GREE,” the social networking service (SNS) provided in Japan, and “OpenFeint” (acquired in April 2011), one of the world’s largest social game platforms for smartphones, into one platform. This alliance with Mobicle, one of the top smartphone social game developers in Korea, will allow for the provision of apps to the global market and will also enhance GREE’s development platform for smartphone social games on a global scale.
Korea is a major exporter of online games*1 and online gaming has become a major local industry, as many Korean developers have extremely talented engineers. In addition there are already 20 million smartphones*2 in the market and the number of developers with extensive experience in developing smartphone games is vastly increasing.
GREE entered into a comprehensive business partnership with the largest Korean carrier SK telecom in August 2011, and is preparing to provide GREE contents and mobile social games to the Korean market in their app store “T store.” With the further establishment of GREE Korea in October 2011, GREE is continuing their expansion efforts in the Korean market.
GREE and Mobicle will co-develop a multitude of social games for smartphones by utilizing GREE’s knowledge and experience in social games and Mobicle’s technological expertise in real-time simultaneous connections and 3D accumulated through mobile game development in US and European markets, in addition to Korea. These games will be released first for “GREE” in Japan, and then on the global platform to be launched in April – June of 2012.
GREE continues to work together with talented development partners to expand selection of first-rate content to provide the number one community service to users worldwide.