NBC gets into games with $110m Bigpoint swoop

NBC's equity firm Peacock has teamed up with UK-based private funding firm GMT to grab a 70 per cent portion of the site (split between them) - the rest remains with 32-year-old chief executive and Bigpoint founder Heiko Hubertzwhich.

His site, founded six years ago, offers a variety of free to play browser-based casual games but encourages users to sign up and pay for extra features.

Bigpoint will now be fast-tracked for US success, and will be promoted on NBC's Sci-Fi and USA cable networks.

“It very quickly became clear that one of the big opportunities for this business was expansion in the US, and with GE and NBC Universal as our co-investors they can help to achieve this,” the FT quotes Tim Green, managing partner of GMT, as saying.

“We like the gaming space in particular, given its growth characteristics,” added Thomas Byrne, head of Peacock, which also invested in in-game ad firm IGA Worldwide, and online game firm Trion which also has a deal with the Sci-Fi channel to make a massively-multiplayer online title alongside a new sci-fi TV show set in the same world.

Byrne also told Variety that the move will also mean new casual games developed based on NBC properties: "We'll be leveraging the unique and powerful aspects of NBC Universal to develop new games and bring Bigpoint to the US."