Virtual Worlds Management, sponsor of the
Virtual Worlds Conference taking place next week in San Jose, Calif., put together a thorough compilation of
investment in the ultra-geeky sector of online role-playing games, detailing $1
billion that went into virtual world companies in the last year.
Cutting to the chase beyond that extraordinary sum, $700 million of it is
attributable to Walt Disney Co.'s acquisition of Club Penguin and another $110
million to Intel Corp.'s $110 million acquisition of graphics technology company
Havok. But fully another $170 million went toward investments by venture capitalists
and corporate backers in 33 virtual world companies.
Christopher Sherman, head of Virtual Worlds Management, notes in a statement that investment
is keeping pace with consumer growth in the industry and that investments
ranged across technology, development and monetization platforms. The largest
investments were in technology companies with traditional venture backers,
including a $26 million injection in Double Fusion from Norwest Venture
Partners, Time Warner Inc., Accel Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Hearst
Corp., IDG Ventures Pacific and Sedona Capital; a $30
million deal for Trion World Network from Rustic Canyon Partners, Time Warner and
GE/NBC Universal; $16 million from Intel Capital for K2 Network;
$12.1 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures in Gaia Interactive; and $12
million for Emergent Game Technologies from Jerusalem Venture Partners, Worldview Technology
Partners, Adena Ventures, Walker Ventures, Copan and Cisco Systems Inc. (Rustic Canyon Partners is an investor in The Deal LLC.)
Perhaps most intriguing, the survey noted an undisclosed investment in Forterra Systems, a designer of virtual world technology for defense and homeland security industries, from In-Q-Tel, a venture fund affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency. - Clifford Carlsen
See press release from Virtual Worlds Management
See August 2006 story from TheDeal.com
See June 19 story from The Deal.com
See Oct. 3 story from News.com
For more see posts Epicenter, Valleywag and TG Daily
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