CryptoLogic Limited has announced that it has closed a deal for a significant stake in Mikoishi Studios, an Asian game development and design company with capabilities in the mobile gaming market.

 

CryptoLogic’s $6.1 million investment in Mikoishi is expected to create a Singapore-based strategic partnership, which according to CryptoLogic, will accelerate the pace of its penetration of the huge Asia-Pacific marketplace. The company expects revenue from the transaction to be accretive to its earnings in 2008.

 

Mikoishi is a creative studio that produces interactive entertainment, based on internally created IP franchises, and it produces games of all genres, including games of chance, action, adventure and a wide range of casual games. CryptoLogic is a blue-chip public developer and supplier of Internet gaming software.

 

“Finding the right partners has been essential to CryptoLogic’s dramatic growth in Europe, and it will be key to CryptoLogic’s future growth in Asia,” Javaid Aziz, president and CEO at CryptoLogic, said in a press statement. “

 

He also added that his company began 2007 with a relationship that brought China-specific games, and “we end the year with an even bigger partnership that will bring us both new games and new capabilities in the massive Asian mobile gaming market.”

 

The partnership with Mikoishi, Aziz said, will bring CryptoLogic games from one of Asia’s most acclaimed developers, and access to a technology platform, which will enable games to be ported to wireless devices.

 

Aziz believes that as so many Asian consumers rely largely or exclusively on wireless communications, the recent stake in Mikoishi Studios will open up new opportunities for his company, which will help to penetrate a “large and thriving segment of the online gaming market.”

 

Initially, CryptoLogic will take a substantial minority equity stake in Mikoishi, and has options to increase its ownership over time. In addition, CryptoLogic will also have representatives on the Mikoishi board of directors.

 

This is CryptoLogic’s second strategic investment in Asia this year. Earlier, CryptoLogic had acquired a significant interest in 568 Network Inc., a developer and distributor of online casual games to the Chinese market and the Chinese-language diaspora.

 

CryptoLogic also has announced that operations in the fourth quarter of 2007 are encouraging, and the company expects to achieve results at the upper end of the guidance it gave on November 8, 2007.