UPDATED 11:20AM: It's official. EA has indeed purchased Chillingo for an undisclosed amount, but according to the L.A. Times, it cost EA less than $20 million.
EA said in an official statement: "By acquiring Chillingo, EA Mobile is increasing its market leadership on the Apple Platform as well as reaffirming its position as the world’s leading wireless entertainment publisher. This acquisition will combine Chillingo’s expertise in cultivating the ideas of independent developers with EA’s global mobile publishing reach."
Original story follows:
Word on Acquisition Street is that mobile games publisher Chillingo, the company behind the wildly addictive and phenomenon inducing iPhone/iPad game Angry Birds, is currently in the buyout sights of publisher Electronic Arts and, possibly, Intel.
According to sources close to All Things Digital, Chillingo’s asking price is likely to be between $80 and $200 million.
It’s assumed that EA isn’t the only company with its sights set on the mobile games publisher, however EA is the only one said to be aggressively pursuing the buyout. EA’s intense interest isn’t all that surprising given that it shelled out $400 million last November to purchase Facebook games developer Playfish.
Chillingo has been in the iPhone games market as long as anyone, and they currently have the number one and number two best selling games on Apple’s App Store—Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. The publisher has a host of new iPhone games in the pipeline, as well as new games for Google’s Android platform.
Source: All Things Digital (via VG247)
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