RSS
Email
SMS
UTV Acquires 80% Stake in Californian Gaming Company
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Email It!
Not too long ago, we brought you news of UTV acquiring a 76% stake in ITNation, which owns digital news properties like Techtree.com, CXOToday.com, Channeltimes.com and Enterpriser.in.
Now, Business Standard reports that UTV Interactive, the gaming division of UTV software has acquired a 80% stake in True Games Interactive, a gaming company based in California. True Games Interactive is known to focus on the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) model, which is fast becoming popular these days. The company plans to release its first title in Q3 ‘08 and has inked a deal with Petroglyph, the dev team best known for its  ”Star Wars: Empire at War” and “Universe at War” series.
UTV’s promoter, Ronnie Screwvala plans to invest $75 million in the gaming division of UTV. Puneet Malhotra, CEO of UTV Interactive, speaking to Gamasutra, said:
Online gaming is the platform of the future once broadband penetration reaches across world markets. While this phenomenon is led by Asia, it has started gaining traction in the west as well. The True Games acquisition gives UTV not only presence in the international online gaming space, both in content creation and publishing but is also a major step towards achieving UTV’s 360 degree gaming vision.
UTV Interactive already holds a controlling stake in Ignition Entertainment, a console gaming company based in the UK and acquired a 51% stake in Indiagames for Rs. 68 crore back in 2006. With the acquisition of True Games, UTV has now marked its presence across three major gaming platforms viz. console gaming, online gaming and mobile gaming. Developments in any or all of these platforms will be a big boost for the company’s progress.
The online gaming community has been globally expanding at an alarming rate and is expected to grow 36% from the current 276 million to 376 million in year 2012. This growth of the community is expected to increase revenues from $5.7 billion to around $13 billion in 2012. Countries who are adopting to this style of gaming will play a major contributing role in the development of this sector. Already, the US and Europe are high growth markets with easy and widespread availability of broadband at the consumer’s perusal. Online multiplayer gaming makes it easy for anyone to use their PCs and internet connections and play along, thus nullifying the need of any extra hardware.
Even though the gaming industry in India is booming with more and more international companies outsourcing development work here, the Indian gaming community has been slow in adopting to the developments in the market. Despite console gaming being popular, the community is yet to explore grounds of online gaming. A large factor for this could be the lack of good internet connectivity in the country. The lack of unlimited broadband is also an important factor for the slow growth.
This is an attempt by UTV interactive to strengthen its foothold in the MMORPG market that is expected to have substantial growth in terms of size and revenue in the international markets.
Loading ...
“Online multiplayer gaming makes it easy for anyone to use their PCs and internet connections and play along, thus nullifying the need of any extra hardware” - This makes no sense… an internet connection and MMORPGs do not “nullify” the need for the appropriate hardware like a good graphics card or a fast CPU not to mention a bit of RAM. MMORPGs are mostly resource hungry 3D games and perhaps you had confused this term with the millions of tiny Flash based thingies that you see online these days…