1）Digital Chocolate日前宣布收购游戏发行公司Sandlot Games。Sandlot Games通过旗下门户网站发行的游戏包括《Super Granny》和《Cake Mania》，该公司于2002年成立，位于华盛顿，拥有一支富有经验的休闲游戏开发团队。

digital-chocolate(from pocketgamer.co.uk)

Digital Chocolate首席执行官Trip Hawkins表示，这项收购交易有助于扩大公司在西雅图和东欧地区的影响力，并称这次交易有助于双方通过交叉推广游戏扩大用户基础。

2）德国社交游戏开发商Wooga在日前的欧洲GDC大会上宣布向Facebook推出第6款社交游戏《Magic Land》。

Magic Land(from blog.games.com)

该游戏结合了社交玩法和角色扮演冒险元素，玩家在其中的任务就是建立和保卫自己的王国。据该公司 首席执行官Jens Begemann所称，公司将在未来数周发布一个HTML5版本，不过这个版本的可玩性可能会略逊色于原生桌面版本。

3）俄罗斯发行商I-Jet Media日前宣布推出新社交游戏平台I-Jet Connect，支持社交游戏开发商在世界各种社交平台上管理自己的游戏。

i-Jet Connect(from venturebeat)

I-Jet Connect将支持开发商在多个国际或本土社交网络上发布游戏，管理流量，或在游戏中植入广告。该平台的内部测试时期是8月15日至11月份，开发商现在已可通过该公司网站申请参与测试。I-Jet Connect已绑定一个独立广告管理系统AdRiver，支持开发商通过内置广告、微交易模式创造收益，此外该平台还将通过交叉推广引导游戏流量。

I-Jet Media成立于20058年，目前共有150名成员，在美国加州、俄罗斯、中国和卢森堡设有工作室，其竞争对手包括iximo、6waves Lolapps和Applifier。

4）据分析公司Visiongain最新报告预测器，通过手机访问社交网络的用户将从今年的11亿增长至2016年的19亿。

该公司称今年的11亿手机社交网络用户中，将有35%为Cyworld、Mobage和Gree等亚洲地区的非Facebook社交网络。

mobile-social-networking(from telecomrecorder.com)

5）投资银行Digi-Capital高管Tim Merel在日前的欧洲GDC大会上发言称，现在正是在线/手机游戏工作室进行合并及收购的好时机，这个领域还没有真正的霸主，投次者对这片市场的兴趣正与日俱增。

Tim Merel(from it.com.cn)

他认为尽管自然发展对游戏工作室来说也是个好出路，但从今天的市场形势来看，如果进行合并或收购，这些工作室将获得更显著的发展。但他同时也指出，希望通过合并谋求更多发展机遇的工作室首先应考虑几个问题：首先是自问为何要出售公司？假如是一家拥有强大作品，运营表现出色的公司，可能最好是选择接受一些投资以获得更快发展。

另一些问题还包括，你真有必要出售公司吗？游戏公司最好在自己很强大的时候出售他人，而非处于劣势时再出手。你能为买主提供哪种战略价值？或者你能否获得持续发展？是否拥有一支强大的核心团队？是否已经开发或拥有经得起考验的原创内容？总之明白自己的价值才是成功胜出的关键。永远不要向买主说谎，因为他们最后总会发现端倪，然后让收购交易就此泡汤。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

6）在本周MAU增长最快的Facebook新晋游戏榜单上，育碧出品的《The Smurfs & Co.》（最近MAU是335万）和EA推出的《模拟人生社交版》（最近MAU是259万）分别位居第一和第二席位，《Zoo World 2》（MAU为864万）、《The Pokerist Club》（MAU为233万）和《GnomeTown》（MAU为100万）也跻身前五名；排在第七位的是韩国网游公司Nexon推出的Facebook游戏《MapleStory Adventures》（最近MAU是126万）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Digital Chocolate expands its reach with acquisition of Sandlot Games

by Kinsey Jamison

Digital Chocolate, a social game developer for mobile and Facebook best known for the popular game Millionaire City, has just acquired Sandlot Games. Sandlot Games are a publisher that host a variety of games on their web portal, with favorites being Super Granny and Cake Mania. The company is headquartered in Bothell, Washington and was founded in 2002, making it a fairly experienced casual games development team.

Trip Hawkins, Founder and CEO of Digital Chocolate says that this acquisition will help them “now expand further in Seattle and Eastern Europe.” He also mentions that they expect to be the leading game studio in 5 of the 7 cities where they have a development presence. The partnership is mutually beneficial, enabling both parties to reach larger audiences with their cross–platform titles.

Digital Chocolate has been doing well in their efforts to go cross-platform. The company has had over 100 million game installs of titles like Millionaire City and Zombie Lane on the web, and has released over 100 social and casual titles.（source:games）

2）Wooga Launches “Magic Land” on Facebook – HTML5 Version to Follow

By Sebastian Sujka

Today at the GDC Europe in Cologne German social game developer wooga has officially launched its sixth game Magic Land on Facebook. During his keynote at the conference wooga CEO Jens Begemann surprised the audience by launching the game “now”. More details on the Magic Land were followed up by wooga Head of Studio Henric Suonnen at his talk about the GDC a little a little later.  Magic Land is a mix of established social gameplay and role play adventure elements. In Magic Land the player leads his knight avatar through several adventures while building up and maintaining a kingdom. The initial mission is to free the king’s children who have been kidnapped by a dragon. The game loop of Magic Land consists of building houses and supplying them with harvested crops. At the first glance the design strongly reminds of Zelda and the story of getting back prince & princess from the dragon has a certain Super Mario element to it. It is great to see wooga trying something new instead of bringing out an optimized version of proven hit genres.

We are also looking forward to the full HTML5 verion of Magic Land that will be available in a few weeks. Although it will not be as rich as the desktop version the HTML5 version will be fully playable. According to Jens a player that will play the game on both devices will gain certain advantages.  In his keynote speech Jens addressed the eminent changing of the games industry into a mass entertainment market. He elaborated, “Social games will make the games industry the definitive medium for mass entertainment. Even today, many games reach more people on a daily basis than the major television formats. The next step in the evolution will be to increase a player’s identification with the game by increasing the game depth combined with more developed social cooperation, interaction and communication. We are heading in this direction with ‘Magic Land’.”（source:socialgamesobserver）

3）Russia’s I-Jet Media launches new social game platform (exclusive)

Dean Takahashi

Russian game company I-Jet Media is launching a new platform for social games today at the GDC Europe game conference in Germany.

Dubbed I-Jet Connect,the platform is designed to enable social game developers to manage their games on dozens and eventually hundreds of social networks across the world, said Alexey Kostarev (pictured below), chief executive and co-founder of I-Jet Media. The strategy is built on the idea that Facebook won’t dominate the entire world and that the number of social networks will actually multiply. It will be an interesting test of whether a company born in Russia can become a major player on the global gaming stage.

I-Jet Connect will let social game developers publish their games on multiple global or local social networks, manage their traffic, and insert brand ads into their apps. It does so through a high degree of automation of what otherwise be a painstaking process for developers. (The company spells its name i-Jet Media and refers to its platform as i-Jet Connect).

The Ekaterinburg, Russia-based company will conduct a closed beta test from Aug. 15 until November. Developers can register for the beta on the company’s web site. I-Jet Media is already one of the world’s largest distribution networks and publishers of social games. It has several dozen social games with an audience of 70 million users. Right now, I-Jet Media can publish titles across 30 social networks.

In Europe, there are multiple social networks that are holding their own against Facebook, Kostarev said in a talk earlier this year at Casual Connect game conference in Germany. That is why it could be a good strategy for game developers to release their games not only on Facebook, but on multiple social networks.

Too often, though, the developers don’t have enough resources to cover multiple platforms. Kostarev said his company’s distribution network can reach the right social networks and take the problem of tweaking the titles for each platform off the hands of the developers. I-Jet Connect essentially automates the process of publishing.

I-Jet Connect is integrated with an independent ad management system called AdRiver. So developers can make money not only via micro-transactions but also through the placement of ads in their games. That also lifts a burden from developers so they don’t have to worry about integrating ads into their games themselves.

I-Jet Connect also promises to help grow traffic for games through a large cross-promotion network. If a developer has already released a game on Germany’s VZnet Networks, but doesn’t have a big audience, then I-Jet Connect could do a swap. It can promote the developer’s game via one of I-Jet’s own popular games, and vice versa. I-Jet Connect also lets developers purchase targeted traffic on any social network, mainly by targeted people who already play social games.

I-Jet Media has 150 employees, with office in Sunnyvale, Calif., Russia, China and Luxembourg. The company was founded in 2005 and it competes with rivals such as Viximo, 6waves Lolapps and Applifier. But Kostarev says that no one offers the range of broad services that I-Jet can.（source:venturebeat）

4）1.9bn mobile social networking users by 2016 claims Visiongain

by Stuart Dredge

Rising from 1.1bn in 2011, with Asia accounting for 35% of those.

Analyst Visiongain’s latest report claims that the number of mobile social networking users will rise from 1.1 billion in 2011 to 1.9 billion in 2016.

That sounds like a lot even in 2011, though. Facebook has 250 million mobile users, which means there are 850 million people accounted for by other social networks in Visiongain’s figures.

The report’s table of contents mentions the likes of Twitter, Foursquare, eBuddy, Orkut, Itsmy and Google+ – perhaps some of these users are being double counted – but Visiongain also says that it thinks 35% of those 1.1 billion mobile social users this year are in Asia, with non-Facebook networks like Cyworld, Mobage and Gree likely high in the mix.

We wonder if messaging services like BBM and WhatsApp Messenger are counted as social networking services for the purposes of the report. They’re certainly likely to have more users in 2016 than Bebo, MySpace and Digg, which are also included.（source:mobile-ent）

5）GDC Europe: Time Is Right For Online, Mobile M&A

by Simon Parkin

The time is ripe for online and mobile game studios to consider mergers and acquisitions, according to Tim Merel from Digi-Capital, an investment bank focused on high growth digital companies across video games, technology, media and telecoms in Europe, North America and Asia.

“Online and mobile studios have a competitive advantage right now,” said Merel, speaking at a Gamasutra-attended session at GDC Europe today. “Nobody is yet truly dominant in the space. You have markets rapidly expanding, with a great deal of interest around them coming from investors.”

“While organic growth is often a good way for game studios to grow, in the current market you have to consider other ways to accelerate. In terms of mergers and acquisitions, the market doesn’t get much better than it is right now.”

Merel explained that global investment returned to 2007 levels by last year, after a significant dip that occurred in line with the recession. “This year, global investments have accelerated even further than that, to the highest they’ve been in years. It’s an extremely exciting times for studios looking to sell.”

However, Merel was quick to urge anyone considering selling their studio or entering into a merger should ask some difficult questions first. “The first thing you need to ask yourself is: why do you want to sell? If you’re running a great games company, producing strong work and being profitable, then sometimes it can be better to pitch for some investment money and simply grow faster that way.”

“Also, it’s important to ask whether you need to sell? The time any company should sell or enter a merger is from a position of strength, not weakness. The best time to sell is essentially the time when you don’t need to.”

While timing is everything, it’s also very important to get your story straight before approaching a buyer. “You have to be very clear on why you are selling, particularly while valuations are strong as they currently are. If a buyer asks and you don’t have real clarity on why you are looking to sell or merge, the risk is that buyer thinks that you know something they don’t, either about your own company, or the wider market.”

The importance of story is also in identifying why you might be a valuable proposition to a buyer. “Identifying this will help you immeasurably with your pitch,” he said. “Do you offer some kind of strategic value to the buyer? Or are you exhibiting sustainable growth? Do you have a very valuable core team? Or perhaps you have developed and now own some strong IP? Knowing your value proposition is key to a successful bid.”

In closing, Merel urged studios interested in M&A to be honest at every stage of the process. “Make sure you always have all of your facts to hand, and never ever tell a lie to a buyer. They will find out about it and they will immediately walk away. It’s the first rule of investment: if you find out a lie, you walk away. Instead, focus on what your story is, and what you provide and do so with absolute honesty.” （source:gamasutra）

6）Smurfs and Sims Lead This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

By AJ Glasser

Ubisoft and EA lead this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users with The Smurfs & Co. and The Sims Social. Zoo World 2, The Pokerist Club and GnomeTown round out the top five.

Jersey Shore drops off our rankings this week, as its recent growth spike appears to have tapped out at just over 1.4 million. We watched the game climb on our weekly rankings around the August 4 premier date of its parent TV show’s newest season. In terms of daily active users, the game is back down to its pre-premier levels.

At No.7 this week is MapleStory Adventures, Korean MMO developer Nexon’s first Facebook offering. The 2D side-scrolling adventure game replicates many of the paid items that monetize well in the original MapleStory free-to-play MMO. Nexon is carefully monitoring player behavior, however, to see if the same items sell as well to social gamers. Read our review for more details on the game.（source:insidesocialgames）