Latin America’s largest social gaming publisher, Mentez recently announced that they’ve recently received an injection of fresh capital, provided by New York based Insight Venture Partners. The exact amount remains undisclosed, but Mentez plans to use the investment to expand its social gaming offerings, thus enhancing their leading position in the Latin American market.
“We see increasing demand across Latin America for fun and engaging social games,” said Juan Franco, co-founder and CEO of Mentez. “This investment from Insight Venture Partners will help us expand inside Brazil – which is our dominant market – as well as help us take advantage of the broader opportunities in Latin America. We’ve been laying the groundwork for this new phase in Mentez’s growth, and Insight Venture Partners fully supports our expansion plans.”
The majority of Mentez’s offerings reside on the Google owned Orkut, a social network that one might compare to Bebo, in so much as, “it’s never really caught on in the North American market.” Orkut does, however, have a massive following in Latin and South America, where 50+ million daily active users visit the platform. Mentez manages over 21 games on Orkut, as well as 7 on Facebook, garnering a staggering 22 million active players every week. As a testament to their involvement and reach in the Latin/South American market, Mentez are the folks that distribute the now Disney owned Playdom titles on Orkut, most notably Tiki Resort and Bola.
Mentez’s impressive credentials don’t end with big name relationships with Google and Disney. They also offer virtual branding options, and have worked with major brands including Kraft, Walmart, Samsung, Hyundai, American Express, and 20th Century Fox. Their most recent campaign with Kraft foods involved special cocoa seeds offered in the number 1 Orkut game, Colheita Feliz (Happy Harvest), whereby players could plant and grow chocolate trees. The end product was a Kraft branded chocolate bar (Mini Bis) that happy harvesters could use, steal, or give to friends. The four week campaign generated a landslide of Twitter, YouTube, and blog buzz.
“We looked at multiple social gaming publishers in Latin America, and – in additional to being the leading Brazilian social gaming company – we believe that Mentez’s strong management team has the experience and strategy to win in adjacent markets,” said Jeff Horing, managing director at Insight Venture Partners. “The high quality of Mentez’s content, its strong player base and its developer relationships will result in continued success for the company.”
Last week saw two significant purchases for Zynga. First up, and directly combating DeNA’s Japanese dominance, Zynga confirmed the acquisition of Tokyo based social gaming firm Unoh for an undisclosed price, although speculation places the deal around $30 million. This acquisition is part of Zynga’s larger plans for expansion into the Japanese market, as just one week prior Zynga and SoftBank entered into an agreement to make and market mobile games in Japan.
And while Japan might be quietly chugging along, recent news from Japanese mobile games portal DeNA, particular in regards to revenues, has firmly planted Japan’s social gaming market firmly on the map. So much so that DeNA is rivaling social gaming darling Zynga’s numbers.
Naturally, the increase in revenues is tied to the aforementioned increase in users. Maple Story North America has now officially surpassed the 7 million registered user mark. Likewise, Nexon’s first-person-shooter offering, Combat Arms has passed the 4 million registered user mark, and Mabinogi went over the 1 million mark earlier this year. From these three titles alone, that puts Nexon North America at over 13 million registered users, and that’s not even including Dungeon Fighter Online, PopTag, and Vindictus.
Facebook’s 3 year old gift shop allowed users to purchase virtual goods, or gifts, for other Facebook friends via that platforms’ virtual currency system. Typically, 10 credits cost $1, with the average virtual gift costing anywhere between 20-30 credits, thus making that virtual birthday cake cost a few bucks. Nothing to break the bank, but also…nothing that users were really interested in.
In a world of increasing Twitter awareness and usage, the company has been struggling for quite some time as to how to monetize their product. Taking a look around the retail landscape of today’s internet, the Twitter crew may have just found the porridge which is just right.
