CryptoLogic Limited, a software developer to the global Internet gaming industry, has closed a deal for a significant stake in Mikoishi Studios, a top Asian game development and design company with strong capabilities in the mobile gaming market. CryptoLogic’s $6.1 million investment in Mikoishi creates a Singapore-based strategic partnership that will accelerate the pace of CryptoLogic’s penetration of the huge Asia-Pacific marketplace. The company expects revenue from the transaction to be accretive to its earnings in 2008.

"Finding the right partners has been essential to CryptoLogic’s dramatic growth in Europe, and it will be key to CryptoLogic’s future growth in Asia," said Javaid Aziz, CryptoLogic’s President and CEO. "We began 2007 with a relationship that brought us China-specific games - and we end the year with an even bigger partnership that will bring us both new games and new capabilities in the massive Asian mobile gaming market."

The Mikoishi partnership will bring CryptoLogic games from one of Asia’s most acclaimed developers, and access to a technology platform that allows games to be ported to wireless devices. Because so many Asian consumers rely largely or exclusively on wireless communications, this opens up new opportunities for CryptoLogic to penetrate a large and thriving segment of the online gaming market.

CryptoLogic will initially take a substantial minority equity stake in Mikoishi, and has options to increase its ownership over time. CryptoLogic will also have representatives on the Mikoishi board of directors.

This is CryptoLogic’s second strategic investment in Asia this year. The company also acquired a significant interest in 568 Network Inc., a developer and distributor of online casual games to the Chinese market and the Chinese-language diaspora.

CryptoLogic also announced that operations in the fourth quarter of 2007 are encouraging, and the company expects to achieve results at the upper end of the guidance it gave on November 8, 2007.

Other IT news about CryptoLogic