What an exit today in Japan’s social gaming industry: Korean gaming powerhouse Nexon (currently listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a US$6 billion market cap – more than DeNA or GREE) has acquired gloops (corporate site).
The size of the deal reaches a staggering Yen 36.5 billion (US$469 million) – in cash.
The reason why Nexon pays that kind of money is simple: Tokyo-based gloops knows how to do social games that work (in Japan, at least), and Nexon is currently in the process of trying to learn.
gloops is best known for being the largest third-party game provider on Mobage. In the past few years, gloops managed to build up an impressive catalogue of hit games, which is why DeNA partnered up with them inside Japan and abroad.
The company’s secret sauce was that it figured out that social card battle games would catch on very early on. It then executed faster and better than anyone else on Mobage in the most popular genre in Japan’s social gaming industry today, including DeNA.
The Nexon deal also marks the first time that gloops has disclosed detailed financial information:
Full press release in English.
Update: Investor deck in English.
