Key games: The Hobbit, Kingdoms of Middle-earth, Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, Fast & Furious 6: The Movie This will create its own administrative issues, but when combined with a strong release schedule in the coming months, Gamevil certainly has the opportunity to really shine during 2014. Gamevil has doubled down too, snapping up key partners such as Dark Avenger studio Boolean and Monster Warlord developer Everple, and investing in half a dozen more. The result is a company with combined annual sales of around $150 million and global scale in both development and publishing. Of course, the headline move was its $65 million acquisition of its larger Korean outfit Com2uS. Yet where the company particularly impressed has been its corporate development where it's been actively pursuing investment and equity deals with developers and rivals alike. Financially it demonstrated growth with its international business performing well and annual sales up 16 percent to $76 million. Key games: Monster Warlord, Fishing Superstars, Dark Avenger, ZenoniaĢ013 proved to be a banner year for Korean publisher Gamevil. Sure, there's a long way to go to regain profitability, but the worm has turned, and Zynga still has $1.1 billion in cash for further acquisition opportunities. Headcount has been further cut and mobile gaming is now the focus, with the company's casino games and Words With Friends already performing better financially. Yet even without the deal, Zynga's new management is clearly ready to do what's required to turn around the struggling company. The much vaunted Clumsy Ninja also impressed from a technical point of view, and no doubt, there's plenty more to come from the studio in 2014. NaturalMotion had a strong 2013, in which it strengthened its CSR Racing franchise with the release of effective expansion pack CSR Classics. Nevertheless, Zynga's surprise move to acquire UK studio NaturalMotion for that amount boosts the combined entity into our top 10. No one spends $527 million on goodwill (although it sometimes ends up being accounted for in this way).
Key games: CSR Racing, Words With Friends, FarmVille, Zynga Poker Of course, the vast bulk of its players are Korean, yet as the Kakao platform spreads globally - notably throughout southeast Asia, Turkey and parts of Europe, CJ E&M's simple, social games will have the potential to find an even larger audience. Particularly strong on Android, it's released dozens of titles, with the revenue generated from the like of Monster Taming and Everybody's Marble for Kakao placing CJ E&M as the third top grossing company globally on Google Play, behind GungHo and King. When it comes to mobile content, however, CJ E&M's rise has been on the coat-tails of Korean mobile messaging service KakaoTalk. As well as mobile apps and games, it has its fingers in music, TV, movie theatres and shopping malls. Part of the CJ Group - a conglomerate with activities ranging from logistics and home shopping to pharmaceutics, biotechnology, food and entertainment - CJ E&M is Korean's largest media company. Key games: Monster Taming, Everybody's Marble for Kakao, 2013 for Kakao Yet, let's not forget the six companies who have been sequentially listed for each of the past five years: Backflip Studios, DeNA, EA Mobile, Gameloft, Gamevil, and Glu Mobile may have had various ups and downs over the years, but they also demonstrate that while form is temporary, class remains permanent. This underlines the global nature of the industry, while the fact that three of those companies head straight into the top 10 remind us that today's newcomers can quickly become tomorrow's leaders. These are the reasons we welcome 13 new companies - three from Korea and Europe, two from the US, China and Japan, and one from Russia - into 2014's list. So, bigger, more lucrative, more global, more competitive, and more complex are the phrases that describe the current mobile gaming ecosystem. The industry isn't just growing, however, it's also evolving something that can be clearly seen in the significant structural changes that are happening in markets such as Korea, Japan, and China. For example, over the past 12 months, we've seen two games - Puzzle & Dragons and Candy Crush Saga - each generate more than $1 billion in terms of mobile sales. It's the fifth year of our annual ranking and one that demonstrates the industry continues to grow quicker than anyone imagined.
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