Google Ventures reportedly invests in Apple game maker Ngmoco

August 11, 2010 | Dean Takahashi

Google Ventures has made an investment in iPhone game publisher Ngmoco, according to a report by Techcrunch.

Techcrunch said that the venture capital arm of Google has made an investment in Ngmoco. That’s startling in part because Ngmoco has been joined at the hip with Apple.

Ngmoco was started in the spring of 2008 by Neil Young, a former executive at Electronic Arts. The company raised money from Kleiner Perkins’ iFund to make games for Apple’s new phone platform. During the past couple of years, Ngmoco became successful with many titles in the AppStore. To date, it has not made any games for Google’s Android mobile operating system. For its loyalty, Ngmoco has been rewarded. The company’s games are frequently featured in the AppStore by Apple, allowing Ngmoco to get a lot more attention for its games.

Techcrunch said the funding is in the $3 – $5 million funding range. The valuation was well above $100 million, and the funding comes on top of a $25 million third round of funding in February. Techcrunch also said that Ngmoco is profitable. Simon Jeffery, chief publishing officer, said at our MobileBeat conference that the company switched business models last year after Apple started allowing in-app purchases on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Under that model, Ngmoco can give away games for free and charge small amounts of real money for virtual goods in the games. Jeffery said that model has been very lucrative for Ngmoco. Top games by Ngmoco include We Farm, which is the second most popular game on the iPad.

The investment could cause some tension between Ngmoco and Apple. And Google Ventures, which operates separately from Google, probably had to do this kind of investment to win Ngmoco’s support for the Google Android operating system. I can only imagine what kind of call Young at Ngmoco is getting from Apple’s Steve Jobs now. Ngmoco declined comment.

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Tags: Android, Google Android

About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

http://twitter.com/robertjweber Rob Weber

NGMOCO is defining what it means to be a mobile/social gaming company. We-rule is incredibly addicting on the iOS, especially after you add a few friends. Only about 2% of the apps in the App Store are currently using in-app purchasing. I bet We-rule’s ARPU is much higher than most other iOS developers think. By the time other developers catch on with respect to how much money is being made in freemium app models, guys like NGMOCO with have a Zynga/Facebook-like first mover advantage and they will be very tough to compete with. It feels like we are where Facebook social gaming was a couple of years ago in mobile right now…
http://twitter.com/Bedwa Brian Edwards

Interesting, especially sinceI'm sure I'm not the only one out there that has my old iphone/ipod for only one game after moving to android. My guilty pleasure? NGMOKO's eliminate pro. So addicting.
http://gigaom.com/2010/10/12/the-future-of-social-games-is-mobile/ The Future of Social Games is Mobile: Tech News «

[...] Ngmoco, an iFund company funded by Kleiner Perkins, has had a string of hits such as We Rule, Rolando and Topple on the iPhone and is now poised to begin selling apps on Android after a reported investment from Google. [...]