Be it a current “State of the Industry” trend, or just good ol’ fashioned “Mum’s the word,” late 2010 is revealing a couple of secret investments/acquisitions that have the potential to be major game changers. You’ll remember Google’s top secret investing in Zynga, something we’ve not heard much about as of late – a sign that reports might be dead on. Not to be outdone, a recent PaidContent.org report indicates that Microsoft has had some “off the record” dealings of it’s own this year.
When questioned, Microsoft admitted that it hasn’t publicaly announced any of it’s 2010 acquisitions, but in fact, has made around 15 this year. While Microsoft is keeping the names of said companies close to it’s chest, Joseph Tartakoff of paidcontent.org confirms that one of these acquisitions was Vivaty, a 3D virtual world, i.e. a Second Life competitor. Having raised over $9.4 million in seed money from investors including Kleiner Perkins, the virtual world firm abruptly shut down shop back in April of this year, with former EA VP Keither McCurdy saying that the firm had run out of capital. At the time McCurdy told VentureBeat that the company was in the process of being sold, and that the IP would be used “as the foundation for something else.”
Ok, so Microsoft purchases a company. Standard fare, no? On any given Sunday, yes. However – when viewed in the light that’s recently started to surface about Microsoft making overtures to a number of social gaming and virtual world corps, least of which includes Linden’s Second Life. And they’re not just looking at Second Life, as the rumor mill has been flooded with speculation that Microsoft was in talks to purchase CrowdStar earlier this year, although no deal has gone through – at least that we know about. The social gaming acquisition, one that there has been no official announcement on, seems to make sense, and is a bit surprising that we’ve not seen from Microsoft. The more puzzling question is – why Redmond’s interest in virtual worlds?
Metaplace, There.com and Vivaty, all virtual world spaces – all gone the way of the dodo bird. Even the one that started them all, Second Life, isn’t exactly making the kind of waves (and revenues) it once did. The only possible logical explanation is a virtual world tie in with Xbox Live, and thus, an extension to Windows Phone 7 OS, taking on Sony’s Home service. The only other remote possibility is that Microsoft sees some light in business virtual worlds, something similar to IBM’s CityOne project, but again, this is probably the lesser of two possibilities.
To their credit, if Microsoft is planning something huge behind the scenes, they’re doing an incredible job of keeping things quiet. Managing Director of corporate development Marc Brown recently stated that Microsoft had made about 15 acquisitions over the past 12 months, all for less than $75 million. Including the Vivaty confirmation, we’re still counting only 6 – where/who are the other 9, and what does Microsoft have in store?
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