CDC Corporation's (CHINA) business unit CDC Games has signed a definitive agreement to make an investment of approximately US$1.62 million in Korean-based online game developer Gorilla Banana.
With this investment, CDC Games will begin to position itself as much more than a publisher of games in China. In addition to the exclusive rights for distribution in China of Gorilla Banana's first game, the much anticipated Red Blood, CDC Games will also have exclusive rights to distribution in India.
Company officials view India as the world's next emerging games market and this expansion will further distance CDC Games from its legacy competitors in China. This is also viewed as the first step in a continuing expansion that will leverage the global infrastructure established by the CDC family of companies including offices in over 30 countries and more than 400 software engineers and developers in India. To further enable this expansion, CDC Games will continue to leverage its initiatives thus far to establish exclusive partnerships with proven, world class designers, developers and publishers.
Gorilla Banana is an independent, online games development company founded in February 2006 whose founders include Musik Jung, Jung-Uk Lee and Do-Hyung Lim, who were formerly game directors at NCsoft, the largest online game publisher in South Korea.
"CDC Games is one of the most successful online game companies in China and we are delighted to have them as an investor," said Chanjoon Kim, co-CEO of Gorilla Banana. "With the investment and their breadth of operations and expertise in China, the world's largest online games market, we expect to see significant success of our online games in the global marketplace."
"Our investment in Gorilla Banana will provide us with future innovative and highly popular online games for our China and India markets that will fuel our continued strong growth," said Xiaowei Chen, CEO of CDC Games. "We firmly believe this will be a very successful partnership because of their impressive expertise and proven track record in delivering widely popular and innovative online games for the global marketplace, and will enable us to position ourselves as more than a publisher of online games."
CDC Games will be the company's second largest shareholder and Peter Yip, CEO of CDC Corporation, will serve on the board of directors of Gorilla Banana.
