Ngmoco Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

EA staff leaves for Ngmoco Sweden

by Mike Schramm (Jan 3rd, 2012)

A few more Electronic Arts employees have jumped ship for Ngmoco's newest studio, in Sweden. After Ben Cousins (who formerly worked at EA's "EAsy" division) left to form Ngmoco Sweden, he's apparently been building a wishlist of various developers, and now he's grabbed three more, this time ...

Ngmoco acquires Lionside, maker of sports games on Facebook

by Michael Grothaus (Sep 15th, 2011)

iPhone mobile game publisher Ngmoco has confirmed that it has acquired Lionside, the San Fransisco-based maker of social networking sports games on Facebook. Ngmoco is the maker of over 20 popular iPhone games, including Rolando and Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid. There's no word on ...

Ngmoco hires Ben Cousins, creates ngmoco Sweden

by Mike Schramm (Jun 21st, 2011)

Ngmoco has picked up former EA developer Ben Cousins, the man behind much of that company's free-to-play services at the EAsy division. He will establish a new studio under ngmoco called ngmoco Sweden, which will create games and content using ngmoco's (and parent company DeNA's) services and ...

Rolando and Rolando 2 updated with Retina Display, on sale now

by Mike Schramm (Apr 1st, 2011)

Ngmoco has surprised us with some updates. Rolando and its sequel Rolando 2 have both been updated for the iPhone 4's Retina Display and have had a few bug issues fixed. To celebrate the update, they're both on sale for just US$0.99. Either one of these is a bargain at that price. They're both ...

Interview: Ngmoco's We Rule after a year on the App Store

by Mike Schramm (Mar 19th, 2011)

Ngmoco's We Rule has arguably changed the App Store since its release. Before We Rule, the App Store was generally based on a rather traditional gaming model -- developers released games for a price, and customers paid or didn't pay based on that price. But with We Rule, Ngmoco (as outlined by ...

Two new titles released by Ngmoco, Adventure Bay and Star Wars: Imperial Academy

by Mike Schramm (Dec 6th, 2010)

Neil Young and his company Ngmoco are running out of time to get all twenty new freemium products out that were promised earlier this year, but it looks like they're going to make a run at it anyway. Over the past weekend, Ngmoco released two brand new freemium titles on the US App Store. First up ...

Deal documents show Ngmoco's 50 million downloads, $10m losses in 2009

by Mike Schramm (Oct 13th, 2010)

Stuart Dredge of MobileEntertainment did some digging into the paperwork behind the Ngmoco sale, and came back with some interesting figures about the company's financials. Turns out that rumored $403 million purchase price is true -- kind of. The deal includes a $100 million bonus, if Ngmoco keeps ...

Japanese game giant DeNA buys Ngmoco for $400M

by Dave Caolo (Oct 12th, 2010)

Japanese gaming company DeNA has announced plans to purchase Ngmoco for a cool US$400 million. This purchase sets quite a precedent as it represents one of the highest amounts ever paid for an iPhone application development firm. DeNA sees the mobile social gaming market heating up rapidly. The ...

Freeverse releases Hordes of Orcs 2 for OS X and Windows

by Mike Schramm (Oct 5th, 2010)

When up-and-coming iPhone company Ngmoco bought old-school Mac game developer Freeverse, one of the big worries was whether the developer would continue to program games for the Mac. But worry not -- Freeverse has released a sequel to its old Hordes of Orcs 3D tower defense game, and it's available ...

Ngmoco releases We City

by Mike Schramm (Sep 23rd, 2010)

Ngmoco has introduced its third title in the "We" series. We City arrives after We Rule and We Farm as the same kind of social simulation game. This time around, players will be building and creating their own cities, but other than the setting and the graphics, not too much has changed. Just like ...

TUAW preview: NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs

by Mike Schramm (Sep 14th, 2010)

Since I got my new iPhone 4 a few weeks back, I've been playing more games than ever on Apple's little handheld. I just recently got back into Ngmoco's We Rule. It's probably the pinnacle of the "freemium" genre on the iPhone so far. It's free to play, very social, and very much based on timed ...

Ngmoco's iPhone titles nominated for a few GDC Online awards

by Mike Schramm (Aug 25th, 2010)

Nominations have been announced for the Game Developers Choice Online Awards (to be announced at the upcoming GDC Online conference in Austin), and iPhone developer Ngmoco has secured a few spots in among the rest of the big PC game developers. We Rule picked up nominations for Best Online Game ...

Ngmoco releases We Farm in the US, celebrates three million We Rulers with free mojo

by Mike Schramm (Aug 5th, 2010)

Ngmoco's free to play strategy is spooling right along -- not only is its We Farm title now available on the US App Store (it arrived late last week after a short beta in Canada), but the company is also celebrating three million We Rule players by awarding everybody 20 free mojo. New players can ...

Ngmoco's We Farm now available in Canada

by Mike Schramm (Jul 20th, 2010)

Ngmoco has released the followup to its popular We Rule game on the Canadian App Store. We Farm is, as you can see above, very similar to We Rule, with the main difference being that the game is set on a farm rather than in a medieval fantasy world. You'll be able to raise animals, plant ...

Flurry: In-app purchases generating lots more revenue per user

by Mike Schramm (Jul 16th, 2010)

Analytics firm Flurry has announced that in-app purchases are generating $14.66 per user per year in June of 2010, which is a few times larger than it has been in the past. Previously to 2010, the games tracked were generating only a few bucks per user per year, but in January the total jumped to ...