Of all the calling and messaging apps that provide mobile gaming platforms to their users, the biggest players in the space are WeChat, Tango and LINE.
The latter of the three, Japan’s LINE, has announced it will create a 10 billion yen (about $100 million USD) fund called the “Line Game Global Gateway” in September that will be managed by a new division called LINE Ventures.
490 million users have downloaded LINE games 410 million times
At today’s press conference, the company announced its 490 million users have downloaded its games 410 million times. In the three years LINE has been in business, LINE apps and games saw a whopping one billion downloads.
In addition, Line announced its acquisition of a 10 percent stake in leading game company Gumi, the company that brought us Brave Frontier. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but Gumi is expected to IPO later this year and reach a valuation of up to $1 billion USD. Gumi is expected to start producing games for the LINE gaming platform by the end of 2014.
The reasoning behind this acquisition is to bring LINE games to the forefront in the United States as reported early last month. LINE Euro-Americas CEO Jeanie Han told TruTower back in June that the company was looking to “kill the competition with creativity” and the Gumi acquisition certainly fits parallel with that goal.