Japanese gaming firm buys 'iFunded' ngmoco for $403 million

This hasn’t taken long: recall one of the early winners of funding from the infamous ‘iFund’ venture capital stash designed to boost Apps development? It was ngmoco, of course, and now that hugely succesful company is set to be acquired by Japanese social games network, DeNA Co.

The $403 million purchase follows August’s news that Google Ventures invested $5 million in the developer.

“ngmoco will lead DeNA’s efforts in the Western world, including launching a new western smartphone version of the incredibly successful Social Games Network, Mobage (we say “Mo-ba-gae”) that we’re building together with DeNA,” the games developer says in a note on its site.

As predicted, ngcomo is also introducing existing and new products to Android devices. “We love iOS and our commitment there hasn’t diminished, we’re simply adding Android into the mix, bringing the very best titles from ngmoco, Freeverse, Miraphonic, Stump Town & our plus+ partners to these amazing devices,” the compay informed.

For developers — particularly those enjoying Apple’s new glasnost toward non-Apple development IDES, the big news follows:

“We’ve also got exciting news for developers & our plus+ partners. We’re going to be opening up our platforms and frameworks, allowing them to access both the technologies and traffic that power ngmoco & DeNA products globally. By integrating the native libraries and technologies that power our leading ngmoco family of games & our plus+ network with the Mobage SDK, we’ll create the Open Mobage Smartphone SDK. Developers who target this platform will gain access to the APIs, Libraries & Services that power the leading smartphone games, effortlessly bring their applications to both iOS & Android and get immediate access to a community of tens of millions of users both here in the West and Japan.”