GS Raises $1,000,000 in funding!

JGary321

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/14/gendai-games-raises-over-1-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-game-creation-tool/

Hopefully this will speed things along nicely

debugdesign

Well done Gendai... what are you going to spend the money on?

DanielA

Haha thats amazing!

Also GameSalad has powered over 800 titles in the iTunes App Store including **Asplosion! HD** and **Doodle Cannon**. Thats awesome that they mentioned you guys!!

beefy_clyro

Congrats

AppChogie

Congrats GS, well done!

scorelessmusic

*thumbs up*

quantumsheep

Can we have Pause now?

Please?

QS

TwistedMech

Too right QS, I am sure they can now find a programmer who can implement a bloody pause ha ha.

StormyStudio

ooooh.....can we have everything on our wishlist...or maybe a competition where the best app made in 2011 with a friggin cool sports car as the prize :-) (with shipment to the UK included)

Photics

Things are certainly getting interesting around here.

reddotinc

I can see GS taking it to the next level now

quantumsheep

Photics said:
Things are certainly getting interesting around here.

Absolutely.

There *had* to be another way of generating cash for GS other than relying on us guys to pay a sub once every year.

Which unfortunately could make us all less important to Gendai. As in, the price for Pro stays the same.

I think, after iAds, and as Synthesis has pointed out on a number of occasions, you can pretty much guarantee that any of the really cool features we get (GameCentre, Facebook/Twitter integration etc etc) will be Pro only to justify the price.

I just hope they don't put Pause in there...

QS

Photics

quantumsheep said:
Which unfortunately could make us all less important to Gendai. As in, the price for Pro stays the same.

I'm not sure. I think it puts more pressure on Gendai Games to sell subscriptions. To do that, the prices need to be more competitive.

They are listening to our concerns. I'm not sure what they're going to do though.

From a business perspective, I like their forum / social networking approach. Basically, they answer technical concerns quickly and openly. Political and business issues, they don't respond. They simply monitor, then make changes when they can... never directly confronting the angry mob. From a developer perspective, that's tough. The quiet communication makes it tough to plan. You have to pick up on the little details and make educated guesses. With iAds, I guessed wrong. HA HA!

I'm not sure where the return is going to be on the million dollar investment, unless they're hoping for a buyout from Google, Apple or some other company looking to get a foothold in game development. A big game company might take an interest in this too. The independent developers are going to eat their lunch. I consider this like file sharing to the music industry, except GameSalad is legal.

chosenonestudios

Sooo free pro memberships?

BeyondtheTech

I can only see this as a good thing. Congratulations, Gendai. $1M can go a long way to getting some of the much needed resources to help speed and expand development. Like I said previously, GS is a great engine to work with, and we all know you have the potential to make this platform even greater.

Now, go get some qualified people and put in pause, social networking features/online multiplayer/server capability, camera / clock / microphone / proximity sensor / gyro / flash LED / iPod library access, arrays and database support, universal binary, push notifications, native XCode output or insertable modules, custom fonts, speech synthesis, sprite sheets, video playback, Windows port for Creator, Windows Internet Explorer/Firefox plug-in, anti-piracy measures, in-app purchasing, full string manipulation, parent/child actors, pivot points, polygon-shaped collisions, among a few other things...

You could also be nice and upgrade every Express user up until today to Pro.

chosenonestudios

BeyondtheTech said:
I can only see this as a good thing. Congratulations, Gendai. $1M can go a long way to getting some of the much needed resources to help speed and expand development. Like I said previously, GS is a great engine to work with, and we all know you have the potential to make this platform even greater.

Now, go get some qualified people and put in pause, social networking features/online multiplayer/server capability, camera / clock / microphone / proximity sensor / gyro / flash LED / iPod library access, arrays and database support, universal binary, push notifications, native XCode output or insertable modules, custom fonts, speech synthesis, sprite sheets, video playback, Windows port for Creator, anti-piracy measures, in-app purchasing, full string manipulation, parent/child actors, pivot points, polygon-shaped collisions, among a few other things...

You could also be nice and upgrade every Express user up until today to Pro.

+1

quantumsheep

@BTT - you forgot the kitchen sink

QS

BeyondtheTech

@QS: Hey, at least I got 'pause' in there!

Weswog

Good Job Gendai keep it going

Cheers, Weswog

quantumsheep

BeyondtheTech said:
@QS: Hey, at least I got 'pause' in there!

Don't think I didn't notice it mate

/hugs

QS

butterbean

Wowzers, great job Gendai

AfterBurnett

I don't mind if features like Facebook integration etc stay pro only but we NEED pause. Also, in app purchasing should be for everyone as it helps us use LITE games to sell FULL versions, making more money, thereby making it easier for us to afford pro. Don't mind game centre being pro only either. Basically, I'd buy the pro version if I made enough ;-)

JamesZeppelin

As a growing company this is huge. When I was working at a start up we had a similar thing happen. In investment firm had given us 11m.

There were instant good and bads.

The news spread like wild fire and every one wanted to do business with us.

The bad was that things really had to tigthen up and we were eventually given a board of directors and all the fun and life was sucked out of our company. Eventually they replaced everyone with big wigs. Gave us our stock options and sent us packing.

For the consumer it can't be anything but good though as companies won't invest if they don't think you aren't exceptional. Obviously gender has huge plans.

BeyondtheTech

JamesZeppelin said:
...Obviously gender has huge plans.

I hope we don't see to a gender change! Not that there's anything wrong with that... LOL

Chaser

Well now the investors need to get a return so guess the express version will go up in price and they will offer a trial version with no publishing capabilities and a watermark.

AfterBurnett

My old friend Simon is now a Simone... weirdest Facebook photos ever...

BarkBarkCo

No yellow posts??

Does anyone else get the sense that Gendai isn't cool with mixing "Business" with, um, "business"... ;-)

JamesZeppelin

Lol sorry iPad auto corrected Gendai into gender. Lol

JCFord

1m investment - wow with that kind of money the investors must of taken some heavy % of the company which means they will be looking to make money fast - so we could see GS come out of beta very soon and some price increases and it looks like Gendai will have to stop being an Indie/fun company and now become a serious business!

goliath

I am very interested to see what is next! Great Job guys!!!

Photics

JCFord said:
it looks like Gendai will have to stop being an Indie/fun company and now become a serious business!

I think Gendai Games had a good balance before. The investors should know that the fun-factor is critical to the success of this business... and maybe things will continue. If things get too serious around here, it could have a negative effect.

I've seen what happened with other game companies, so there is reason for concern. Yet, maybe this investment just gives Gendai Games the ability to get work done. They're building a good product already. With more resources it should be amazing.