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The funding was led by the U.K.'s Balderton Capital, with participation from General Catalyst Partners of Cambridge, Mass. and Salmon River Capital of New York. "This is a global business," Salmon River partner Matt Evans explained when asked about the generous size of the funding. He said that while Big Fish faces some competition from sites such as Yahoo! [YHOO] and Microsoft Corp's [MSFT] MSN, which offer their own games, this market for "casual games" is largely untapped in the U.S. and overseas. Big Fish, which already does more than half its business in overseas markets, plans to use much of its new funding to further expand overseas, partly through the launch of a Big Fish Games Japan site. The growing market for casual games like the ones Big Fish offers was also the motive behind Hasbro Inc.'s $77.5 million purchase of Cranium Inc. earlier this year, while some other startups such as the venture-backed PlayFirst Inc. are also targeting this market. Big Fish keeps its users coming back by offering a new game every day. Although it does have an in-house game development studio that develops up to 15 games a year, the majority of its games are created by independent developers. The company describes its games as "easy to play but difficult to master," and says the brain challenging nature of many of its offerings have become particularly popular among middle-aged women. However, it stresses that the target demographic is really broader than that, since its games can be played by a child, parent or grandparent. -- Andrea Orr See Jan 1, 2008 story on Hasbro's purchase of Cranium from TheDeal.com
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