News Corp buys up developer Irata Labs
Acquisition marks media giant's first step into gaming sector
News Corp has acquired developer Irata Labs - a three person San Francisco-based studio specialising in social software.
The move is the media giant's first entry into video games, a sector that its chief digital officer Jon Miller is reported to have called the "missing piece" of the company's online strategy.
According to a source close to News Corp talking to The LA Times, Irata Labs won't be incorporated into any of News Corp's existing assets such as MySpace or IGN, but rather will work with those divisions whenever it makes sense.
Irata specialises in social games, having built several titles around social sites Facebook and Twitter.
Its best-known game is a espionage one called Spymaster, which is played entirely through Twitter. The studio is also working on a location-based technology called Flybly - currently at beta stage - which it says could be used to create scavenger hunt or exploration style social games.
It has also created a non-gaming application called iList Micro, which enable users of Twitter to search the service like a classified ads section, to find items for sale by postcode or category.
"The fact they built a social classified offering, iList, then they built a Twitter game - these guys have shown they can be mould-breakers with great product. And that's what we care about," commented one source allegedly close to the acquisition.
Earlier today it was reported that former News Corp president Peter Chernin is in talks with Microsoft to offer an exclusive television channel on XBL.