{"id":39,"date":"2007-05-31T11:18:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-31T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhirsch.wordpress.com\/2007\/05\/31\/oberon-plays-mobile-with-i-play\/"},"modified":"2012-04-25T14:39:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T13:39:54","slug":"oberon-plays-mobile-with-i-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/31\/oberon-plays-mobile-with-i-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Oberon plays mobile with I-Play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/Rl6wtyoHnXI\/AAAAAAAAAH8\/HBQR9kh0gVA\/s1600-h\/I-Play_logo.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left;cursor:pointer;width:96px;height:96px;margin:0 10px 10px 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/Rl6wtyoHnXI\/AAAAAAAAAH8\/HBQR9kh0gVA\/s320\/I-Play_logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Finally&#8230; I-Play and Oberon today <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iplay.com\/article.do?NID=170&amp;NYID=2007\">announced<\/a> that the former would be acquired by the latter, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globes.co.il\/serveen\/globes\/docview.asp?did=1000217126&amp;fid=942\">allegedly<\/a> for $110-120m. A deal involving I-Play had been rumoured to happen for quite some time, so good for Gosen and his team that they found a suitor. And not a bad one either: Oberon is an online gaming powerhouse, so a move across to mobile makes sense (and they had probably realised that their acquisition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.synergenix.se\/documents\/061120_Oberon.pdf\">Blaze<\/a> (which itself was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.synergenix.se\/documents\/060313_Blaze%20Announcement.pdf\">combination<\/a> of Synergenix and Kayak Interactive) last year wasn&#8217;t getting them anywhere close to where they need to be). I-Play with its CEO David Gosen certainly showed stamina. They published some pretty cool titles (including Gamevil&#8217;s critically acclaimed &#8220;Skipping Stone&#8221; and hit series &#8220;The Fast &amp; The Furious&#8221;) and in spite of oft rumoured shortage of cash just hung in there.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/Rl6w1ioHnYI\/AAAAAAAAAIE\/7f9W1fbzHro\/s1600-h\/oberon_logo.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;cursor:pointer;width:183px;height:40px;margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/Rl6w1ioHnYI\/AAAAAAAAAIE\/7f9W1fbzHro\/s320\/oberon_logo.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Oberon also raised some fresh money from investors Goldman Sachs,  Oak Investments and Lehman Brothers, so all looks good for them, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">UPDATE:<\/span> Today (12 Sept 2007) I-Play <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobile-ent.biz\/news\/28866\/I-play-expands-casual-catalogue\">announced<\/a> 11 new games all drawn from Oberon&#8217;s back catalogue. They are Hexic and Mozaki Blocks (apparently from the creator of Tetris), Flowerz, Slinky, Fish Tycoon, Spin &amp; Win, Bricks of Egypt, Bricks of Atlantis, Magic Match, Bubble Town and Saints &amp; Sinners Bingo. It will be interesting to see what will win in the current battle of big brands and casual games; both are frequently cited as two of the key components of breaking into the mass market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finally&#8230; I-Play and Oberon today announced that the former would be acquired by the latter, allegedly for $110-120m. A deal involving I-Play had been rumoured to happen for quite some time, so good for Gosen and his team that they found a suitor. And not a bad one either: Oberon is an online gaming powerhouse, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1200,1197],"tags":[19,81,111,256,292,404,483,625],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deals","category-games-2","tag-acquisition","tag-blaze","tag-casual-games","tag-gosen","tag-i-play","tag-mobile-games","tag-oberon","tag-synergenix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paSwZv-D","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1638,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/1638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}