GREE Acquires Another US-based Mobile Games Developer

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced today that it has acquired San Francisco-based mobile game company App Ant.

App Ant is the game developer behind Dino Life, which GREE launched back in May as the first Android title for its North American studio. The metrics for that game so far appear less than stellar [1]. A wise friend recently pointed out to me that the game did launch on iOS in Canada, but has yet to launch on iOS elsewhere – ostensibly after not testing as well as expected. You can see the app metrics for the Canada app store below.

But GREE likes what it sees from App Ant, whose members will now join the Japan-based company at its San Francisco studio. GREE International’s CEO Naoki Aoyagi noted:

[App Ant has] continually impressed us with the quality of its engineering, art, and overall product. They share the same strong passion GREE has for mobile social gaming and we genuinely respect their dedication to evolving the gaming industry. […] With our constantly growing and evolving mobile game market, having such exceptional talent on board to build great experiences for the latest hardware is a huge priority for us.

We’re not certain what the terms of this acquisition were, but its not the first time for GREE to splash some money on picking up a US-based game developer. Readers will likely remember when the company spent the huge sum of $210 million for Funzio earlier this year, also based in San Francisco.

Dino Life, Canada iOS app store, from AppAnnie.com