Take-Two Interactive To Acquire Mobile Developer Nordeus For $378M

On June 2nd, Take-Two Interactive announced it had acquired Serbian mobile game developer Nordeus for $378 million. The upfront price of the acquisition ($225 million) will be comprised of cash and $90 million in newly issued shares of common stock in Take-Two.

“Our investment in Nordeus strengthens further Take-Two’s mobile game business, is highly complementary to Social Point and Playdots, and broadens our sports portfolio with our first-ever soccer offerings,” said Michael Worosz, the Executive Vice President and Head of Strategy & Independent Publishing for Take-Two. “Over the last decade, Top Eleven has grown its audience, revenue, and profitability through Nordeus’ introduction of live-ops and ongoing gameplay innovations that continue to drive ongoing consumer engagement. It’s also incredibly exciting for Take-Two to expand our operations into a vibrant, beautiful city such as Belgrade; the local science and engineering talent in Serbia is very strong and the quality of the Nordeus team is a testament to that. We are very pleased to welcome Branko, Milan, Ivan, and Tomislav, and the entire team at Nordeus to the Take-Two family, and are excited by the long-term potential of their development capabilities, which we expect will deliver positive contributions to our business.”

Nordeus is a Belgrade-based organization that was founded in 2010. Some of the company’s most famous titles include Top Eleven and Golden Boot. Nordeus has registered over 300 million total users worldwide.

Take-Two Interactive is one of the world’s most respected video game publishers. Over the years, the business has been responsible for producing the NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead franchises.

The Profit‘s Take:

This is not surprising from Take-Two. The lure of easy mobile dollars is strong and hard to ignore. They have to follow the success that both EA and Activision Blizzard have had in this area. However, I’m also convinced that these mobile acquisitions will hurt Take-Two more than their peers in the long run. The easy mobile dollars will start to attract more resources internally, and Take-Two will inevitably move more of their focus to easier sources of revenue at the expense of more ambitious projects.

(All information was provided by Wikipedia and Take-Two Interactive)