Tag: alibaba mobile games

Kabam makes a deal with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Kabam has received backing from the e-commerce giant, which recently announced that it has invested $120 million in the California startup based out of San Francisco and has entered a partnership with the mobile gaming company to publish and distribute Kabam’s free to play mobile games.

The deal values Kabam at over $1 billion.

In recent years, Alibaba has invested in more than twenty companies that specialize in a diverse range of products and services. Since starting its investment group in Silicon Valley in October 2013, the Chinese company has already funded a minimum of ten startups, some of which include TangoMe Inc., Peel Technologies, Quixey Inc., and Lyft Inc.

Now, with their latest investment, Alibaba will be able to reach even more consumers via mobile games. Kabam has users in over 150 countries that play its many games. This partnership with the mobile gaming firm will help give Alibaba a major push into this mobile sector, where some of its competitors have already enjoyed success. For instance, in order to bring games to its users, Tencent has invested $330 million in Epic Games Inc., $231 million in Riot Game Inc., and an unknown amount in Activision Blizzard Inc.

Kent Wakeford, Kabam’s chief operating officer said about the deal that “Asia is 50% of the gaming market. It is a strategic priority for us.” Wakeford also added that choosing Alibaba “was a very competitive process” because before selecting them, Kabam had also talked to “every major player in China” including Tencent and Baidu.

Alibaba can provide Kabam with a publishing and distribution platform in the company’s target market that it desperately needs. 70% of Kabam’s consumers are on mobile and the company is tracking to achieve revenue of over $550 million this year.

Alibaba’s mobile gaming investment will result in the launch of 10 games within the next three years.

Part of the agreement Kabam made with the massive Chinese firm is to release 10 games over the course of the next three years via Alibaba. The first game is already under development and is based on “The Lord of the Rings”. The other games will be made up of a mixture of popular titles that already exist such as “Dragons of Atlantis”, “Kingdoms of Camelot” and others that could come from studios the mobile gaming company means to buy.

Alibaba sees promise in the mobile space

Alibaba, China’s largest retail organization akin to eBay and Amazon, has announced that it plans to break into the world of mobile games. China has become one of the most promising markets for mobile gaming, partly due to the rapid growth of smartphone and tablet ownership. Alibaba has been seeing a major rise in the potential of the mobile space and is not keen to be left behind by its competitors.

Tencent and Alibaba may clash on mobile games

Alibaba is currently working to develop its own mobile gaming platform. This move likely comes as a response to Tencent’s efforts to make its gratuitously popular WeChat application into a gaming platform. Tencent currently boasts of the strongest presence in China’s mobile sector. The WeChat application has more than 570 million downloads and Tencent itself is behind many of the country’s most popular mobile games. Alibaba is keen to break into the mobile space more aggressively and break the monopoly that Tencent is building.

Developers may find Alibaba’s platform attractive

The organization is providing access to its mobile gaming platform to developers for free this year. This initiative aims to attract game developers to the platform and provide them with the resources they need to develop engaging mobile games that will be associated with Alibaba in the future. The revenue that these games produce will be split, with 70% of the revenue going to developers and 20% going to Alibaba. Approximately 10% of the revenue generated by these mobile games will be donated to rural education initiatives.

Games to be marketed and distributed through Taobao

Alibaba has also committed itself to fully supporting the mobile games that are developed for its platform. The organization will market and distribute these games through its Taobao e-commerce division, which boasts of 700 million users. This will provide developers with a great deal of exposure and help them reach a larger audience that they may not have had access to in the past.