iCandy Interactive Limited (ASX: ICI) has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% voting capital of Nextgamer.io, a mobile game platform and game developer in the business of developing a hyper-casual competitive video games and platform.
Nextgamer is developing a hyper-casual competitive gaming platform and hyper-casual games. Hyper-casual games refer to a new growing trend in mobile gaming where it refers to a new genre of mobile games that are very easy to play and take very short time-frame to complete a gaming session.
Nextgamer develops games that are played no longer than two to three minutes per game session, building on the short sessions trend populated by where popular short video app Tik Tok. The Nextgamer platform is positioned to be a platform that is akin to “Tik Tok of Mobile Games”.
iCandy Chairman, Kin W Lau, said hyper-casual games is one of the fastest growing trends in the mobile games industry. According to a recent media report, hyper-casual games is the category of mobile games that has recorded the most downloads in the first half of year 2020.
Very large global game companies have also started to look at entering the hyper-casual gaming market via corporate transactions e.g. Zynga recently acquired hyper-casual game- maker Rollic for US$168million and Tencent has made a minority investment into Voodoo Games, valuing it at US$1.4billion (source: Techcrunch).
Based out of Singapore, Nextgamer develops both mobile web-based and app-based platform that will allow gamers to play hyper-casual games and enter into casual gaming tournament online. The competitive gaming engine of Nextgamer will have ability to automatically match gamers against one another for competitive gaming that are fun and community focus.
The gameplay of Nextgamer will be extremely easy to master, with almost no learning curve. The design of games will take cue from expertise and existing game library of iCandy, which count more than 300 game titles in its portfolio of games.
The business model of Nextgamer will be to generate income through in-game purchase and advertising on its games, mirroring the business model of iCandy.
iCandy will pay a total consideration of A$1,290,000 for the acquisition of 100% shareholding of Nextgamer, to be satisfied in cash of A$900,000 and three million iCandy ordinary shares to be issued at A$0.13 per share. The shareholders of Nextgamer are not related to the directors of iCandy. The shares of this transaction will be issued under ASX Listing Rules 7.1.
iCandy Chairman Kin W Lau commented “We are really excited at the prospect of hyper- casual gaming, and Nextgamer has a unique proposition that offers very short game sessions on the go to mobile gamers via a casual competitive gaming environment,” Mr Lau said.
“iCandy has extensive expertise in casual mobile games and we can market Nextgamer’s games to our large audience of mobile gamers internationally.”