Game on for NaturalMotion with Zynga

Oxford University spin-out NaturalMotion has been acquired by online gaming platform Zynga for $527m.

NaturalMotion, a game manufacturer itself, was founded in 2001. Its animation engine euphoria has been used in numerous best-selling AAA games titles, such as gaming giant Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3. Its other run-time engine Morpheme is one of the most widely used animation engines in the gaming industry.

The Oxford-headquartered firm has also released games itself, most notably CSR Racing in 2012 for iOS. The game reached number one in the App Store gaming charts in 70 countries, and at one point was generating over $12m in revenues a month.

The acquisition will add both CSR Racing and recently released Clumsy Ninja to Zynga’s growing back catalogue for top mobile gaming hits, as well as giving the firm the rights to the gaming engine intellectual property held by NaturalMotion. The move is an important step for Zynga, which has struggled to make the jump from web-based games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars over to mobile, and also announced a loss of $25m for the fourth quarter of 2013.

Don Mattrick, Zynga chief executive, said: “We believe that bringing Zynga and NaturalMotion together is the right step at the right time. Our acquisition of NaturalMotion will allow us to significantly expand our creative pipeline, accelerate our mobile growth and bring next-generation technology and tools to Zynga that we believe will fast-track our ability to deliver more hit games.”