News Corp. Acquire Danish Developer

Officials from News Corp. subsidiary NDS have announced that the company is to acquire Danish game developer and publisher ITE, best known for its digital pay-TV technology and software. Financial details of the acquisition were not revealed. ITE has published a wide range of titles for both home and portable consoles, as well as the PC, primarily involving the Hugo character popular in Northern Europe. Its most recent successes though have been in the area of interactive television. It is this which appears to have been of primary interest to NDS, although the company has spoken only of providing interactive games on “multiple platforms”. NDS Denmark managing director, Jesper Knutsson commented: "NDS constantly seeks to enrich its offering to customers and ITE is an established leader in the games development and publication arena that fully compliments our existing, high quality interactive TV games proposition. The acquisition further enhances the ability of NDS to offer its existing portfolio of leading content owners and multinational broadcasters world leading interactive games solutions across a wider range of platforms, as well as opening up new opportunities in other, high-growth interactive gaming markets." Rumors that News Corp. was interested in entering the video games market with a large scale acquisition have existing for years, not least as a result of comments from COO Peter Chernin to this effect. The corporation has being linked to companies ranging from Eidos Interactive to Electronic Arts, but the acquisition of ITE does not seem to be on the scale predicted by either the rumors or Chernin himself.