IAH Games Shelves Initial Public Offering

Games firm shelves IPO
Infocomm Asia Holdings pushes back launch due to global financial crisis
By Chua Hian Hou
INVESTORS looking to own a piece of the online video gaming industry will have to wait a little longer.

Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which distributes games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Fifa Online 2, has postponed its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) due to the global financial crisis.

IAH had originally hoped to launch the IPO next year in a bourse in Singapore, Hong Kong or the United States, said chief executive Roland Ong.

Despite the setback, IAH has engaged financial advisory firm Lazard to 'evaluate various strategic options including partnerships with and fund-raising from potential investors,' he said.

The company, which had earlier raised US$25 million (S$36.7 million) from investors, including the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Japan's Softbank and Nasdaq-listed game company Gigamedia, hopes to raise another US$30 million from these sources next year.

Despite the gloomy economic outlook, Mr Ong believes the US$30 million is a 'realistic' target, as many cash-rich companies are still upbeat about the booming Asian gaming industry.

He, too, is bullish about his own company's prospects even in the face of the spreading economic turmoil. He cited studies which show that games do better during downturns because 'they are the cheapest form of entertainment'.

The funds will be used to double the 20 or so game titles it currently offers, to buy additional computer and networking hardware to run online gaming services, and to make acquisitions.

IAH, which was set up in 2006, posted $4 million in revenues last year.

Revenue rose sharply this year, thanks to hits like Grand Theft Auto. The company is 'on track' to meet its forecast revenues of 'over $20 million', said Mr Ong.

He also expects the loss-making firm to turn profitable next year, on the back of over $40 million in revenues.

If and when IAH eventually lists here, it would become the first gaming company to be listed on the Singapore Exchange.

Hellgate may end
INFOCOMM Asia Holdings (IAH), which runs a free online site allowing players of the Hellgate: London video game to play together online, is 'relooking' the service.

IAH's vice president for marketing and strategy Yeo Yeok Chuan said the company is deciding whether to continue offering the free online service, which costs bandwidth and hardware resources.

If online play is discontinued, it will mean that Hellgate would only be playable in its single-player, non-online mode.

The 3D action role-playing game, made by the game gurus which created the hit Diablo, allows players to play solo or with other gamers in the same virtual world. Hellgate was launched last October, to great fanfare.

Since the launch though, the game was plagued by problems.

In July, news broke that Flagship Studios, the company behind Hellgate, was bankrupt. The intellectual property rights to Hellgate passed onto one of Flagship's shareholders, Korean game developer HanbitSoft. IAH chief executive Roland Ong said that Hellgate is going 'back to the drawing board' for more development work, and may be 'revived in the second half of next year'. IAH is Hellgate?s local distributor and online gaming service provider.

The failure of Hellgate, which Mr Ong said was Flagship's fault, had cost IAH dearly.

If Hellgate had taken off, said Mr Ong, it would have doubled IAH's revenues this year. -- Chua Hian Hou

It's like getting an insider peek at IAH

From what I remember of what I read, the Singapore online gaming industry isn't going to boom soon.

There's obviously discord happenning in Granado Espada. If things were ok, then there wouldn't have been a server merge.

I have also read that TATA Systems are now being used in Granado Espada's servers, as well as for the FIFA game. I don't really know what that means, and I even research about it, and the wikipedia article gave me a clue that it has something to do about getting things organized in a database, so that there's an increase in speed, and everything's faster. But it's still vague to me, what TATA Systems means. Maybe TATA, as in goodbye...

What's noticeably missing is there aren't much opposition to the server merge as I would have expected it. Or maybe I haven't been reading the forum enough.

I wish this server merge would have happened before, when I was selling game value cards, so that my online broadcasts would have been read by more people.

But then, maybe, the amount of people in Carracci back then would be the same amount of people now in the new server with Pachelbel. Who knows? It's all just speculation.

What's the new name of the server? Is it Rembrandt?

A lot of the info I get when I search for Granado Espada server merge is about the Sword of the New World one.

Today, I saw what I was looking for, but I found it in the bargain bin. It was Sword of the New World's box game. It's $4.99, and that's really the price. It's in the bargain bin even though that that's what it originally costs. Feedback I got when I told someone I found the game I was looking for: no feedback. That means he must have been withholding a possibly hurtful opinion from me. The next thing that happened was we talked about World of Warcraft. It looks interesting, but I still like the polygon designs in Granado Espada.

And then we looked at Spore. The graphics aren't in my liking.

I only play the game if I like the graphics. And if the controls aren't clunky.

end of journal entry.