games

aXiomatic, an eSports ownership and management group headed by Peter Guber and Ted Leonsis, has received funding from China’s Puji Capital. The Chinese firm was previously involved in Wanda’s attempt to restructure its Wanda Pictures and Legendary Entertainment buy. It also provided finance for Wanda’s purchase of Dick Clark Productions. aXiomatic has made investments into the eSports industry, including the …

Disney’s Club Penguin — the multiplayer online game that has kept kids entertained for more than 11 years — shut its doors for good at 12:01 a.m. PT on March 30. But Disney is hoping that instead of lamenting the closure, which was announced in January, the game’s millions of fans will flock to the sequel: Club Penguin Island, designed from the …

A Pokemon Go deal between Japanese tech giant SoftBank and Niantic Labs lifted shares of SoftBank and Nintendo on Thursday. SoftBank announced a deal with Niantic, the augmented reality game’s developer, to designate 3,700 of SoftBank’s retail phone stores in Japan as Pokemon Go hotspots, known as PokeStops, and Gyms within the stops. The deal is said to be similar to the …

In a move further consolidating the mobile-gaming sector, SGN has acquired Andreessen Horowitz-backed TinyCo, the mobile games developer whose titles built around Hollywood franchises include “Marvel Avengers Academy” and “Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to the companies, TinyCo is on track to generate $100 million in revenue this year, which would …

BAMTech, Major League Baseball’s streaming-video unit backed by Disney, has entered into a multiyear deal with Riot Games to deliver “League of Legends” eSports content around the world. Under the deal, announced Friday, Riot Games — acquired by Chinese internet giant Tencent last year — will work with BAMTech to “grow revenue in our sport through various means, including sponsorship …

AMC and games developer Next Games said they will tightly integrate “The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land” game with the cabler’s TV series “The Walking Dead” with season 7 of the popular zombie-apocalypse thriller. For the first time, fans of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” will be able to play the game to unlock exclusive weekly content featuring new playable characters on Mondays, …

Shares in Japanese games and hardware manufacturer Nintendo dipped a seemingly dramatic 17% in early trade Monday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after the company cooled expectations of an immediate profits bonanza from ‘Pokemon Go.’ The augmented reality game has become an instant sensation since its roll out in North America earlier this month. In a regulatory filing, Nintendo issued …

Activision Blizzard wants to produce more toys and merchandise based on video-game franchises like “Call of Duty,” “Overwatch,” “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush.” The video-game conglomerate has created a new consumer products division, headed by president and CEO Tim Kilpin, who hails from Mattel and Disney. It’s the latest revenue-diversification move from Activision Blizzard, which in the last two …

In a retreat from its ambitions for location-based entertainment, Dalian Wanda Group is selling its theme parks to fellow real-estate developer Sunac China for $9.3 billion (RMB63.2 billion). Wanda will offload 13 of its tourism projects and 76 hotels to Sunac in a combination of asset transfers and sales. According to a statement Monday on Wanda’s website, the deal includes …

Rovio, the company behind hit mobile game “Angry Birds,” is set to release a new game ahead of the debut of “The Angry Bird Movie.” The game, “Angry Birds Action,” isn’t simply a tie-in with the movie but rather a marketing tool that cleverly harnesses the franchise’s line of merchandise for an extensive augmented-reality promotion — to let fans virtually …