Eidos Acquires Rockpool Games, Ironstone, SoGoPlay

Officials from British publisher Eidos Interactive, now owned by SCi, have announced that the company has reached an agreement to acquire British wireless developer Rockpool Games and Rockpool’s two sister companies, Ironstone Partners and SoGoPlay. Eidos will acquire Rockpool’s Manchester studios along with thirty-six staff, who will continue to work on a number of games currently in development – although it is not clear to what degree the developer’s previously announced partnership with Sega will be maintained. All three Rockpool companies will become part of the Eidos New Media division. Rockpool Games has previously been responsible for wireless versions of a number of prominent properties from a wide range of publishers, including Worms, MotoGP, Ronnie O’ Sullivan Snooker and TOCA Race Driver. Ironstone Partners is a licensing company which owns a range of intellectual property rights, as well as sub-licensing the rights for properties such as the Epyx back catalogue, Top Trump, Withit and Commodore. SoGoPlay was formed in October 2006 and is focused on the casual gaming market, developing games and publishing them via its own gaming portal and other prominent gaming websites. “We believe that the global market for mobile games is set to grow considerably over the next few years from around $3billion in 2006 to $10billion in 2009 (source: Juniper Research), and that casual games are also becoming increasingly important. Rockpool’s breadth of activity, including not only mobile games but casual PC games, fits well with Eidos’ strategy to expand the company’s business in this direction and will strengthen our position in these consistently growing markets,” said Eidos CEO Jane Cavanagh.