Philippines: Xurpas acquires stake in Manila studio Altitude Games

Altitude Games’ founding team. CEO Gabby Dizon is 2nd from left.

Philippine tech company Xurpas went IPO just last week, and it’s already putting its newfound funds to good use. The day it went public, it announced that it would be using the IPO proceeds for regional expansion, and that it was already in talks with at least ten entities.

One of those entities is the Manila-based game development studio, Altitude Games. Xurpas has acquired a 21.7 percent stake in it for an undisclosed sum. Registered in Singapore, the Manila-based Altitude Games is responsible for sentai running game Run Run Super V.

Xurpas will have exclusive Southeast Asia distribution rights to games produced by the studio, and these will start with the abovementioned game. According to a press release from Xurpas, Altitude Games is expected to contribute to Xurpas’s mobile content and services portfolio, specifically in game development.

Casual games have made up 42 percent of Xurpas’s 2014 revenue and they are considered one of the company’s key growth drivers.

Altitude Games, headed by CEO Gabby Dizon, is a relatively new studio comprised of industry professionals who have cut their teeth working at studios like Boomzap Entertainment and Imaginary Friends Studio. We recently featured Run Run Super V in our list of best Asian indie mobile games for 2014.

Dizon says that the team is very excited to work with Xurpas, and adds: “Monetizing mobile games in emerging countries has traditionally been very difficult, and Xurpas has grown to be an industry leader in the Philippines in monetizing all kinds of mobile content, including casual games.” Dizon also says that Run Run Super V will be available to the rest of Southeast Asia by 2015. It is already available in Google Play for Thailand and Malaysia.

See: Straight to IPO: How Philippine tech company Xurpas grew without venture capital