Japan's DeNA Acquires Atakama Labs, its First Latin American Subsidiary

We’ve written much this year about how Japanese internet companies — particularly GREE and DeNA — are expanding their businesses overseas. We just received a note from DeNA that continues this trend, as the company has just acquired its first Latin American subsidiary, Atakama Labs.

This is on the heels of acquiring Punch Entertainment Vietnam last month, in addition to its previously established subsidiaries in Singapore, Sweden, and Korea.

Atakama Labs is a game developer based in Chile and according to the announcement it will improve DeNA’s development capabilities for its Mobage platform. We were not familiar with Atakama prior to this announcement, but one of its more popular social games is an 8-bit wonder called Little Cave Hero which you can see in the demo video below.

DeNA director and ngmoco CEO Neil Young noted:

Atakama Labs’ highly skilled engineers and experienced management team will be a great asset as we grow …We are focused on bringing the world’s top talent together to deliver the best games on Mobage, the premier mobile
social network.

Apparently Atakama, which is a 30-person operation, was commissioned to port games to Mobage Global in the past, so the companies had a working relationship in the past. DeNA says that it aims to eventually bring its global staff count the number of staff engaged in smartphone game development up to 1000 from 400 currently.