Publisher shake up as ngmoco buys Freeverse and takes it freemium

In one of those surprising industry moves that's actually not that surprising in hindsight, one American iPhone publisher ngmoco has bought another American iPhone publisher Freeverse.

Actually, ngmoco has also raised $25 million from its investors, taking its total investment to-date up to an impressive $40 million.

The cost of the deal wasn't revealed however.

What we do know however is that it's going to be all change at Freeverse.

The publisher of games such as Flick Fishing, Skee-Balland Parachute Ninja is moving over to the same free-to-play model that ngmoco has successfully adopted with its games such as Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets.

This means Freeverse's future games will be free to download and you'll pay for additional virtual items or customisation options.

Obviously this change takes some time to put into practice so Freeverse's next big internally developed title Warp Gate will be released as a normal paid for game.

However, sources have told Pocket Gamer that Freeverse has sent out an email to its development partners explaining it's only going to be publishing freemium games in future so there will obviously be a cut off point at some point.

If you're really interested in the reasons behind the deal, you can read my opinion piece over on PocketGamer.biz.