San Rafael, Calif. - Autodesk Inc. intends to acquire Scaleform Corp., a privately held user interface (UI) tools and middleware company, for approximately $36 million in cash.
Scaleform’s technology has been licensed in the development of at least 800 games across major hardware platforms: PCs, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), and Nintendo Wii.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and expected to close in Autodesk’s first quarter of fiscal 2012 (which ends on April 30, 2011).
Scaleform’s flagship product, Scaleform GFx, enables development teams to author game UIs and interactive 3D experiences using popular design tools: Adobe Flash and Adobe Creative Suite software. Scaleform GFx helps developers take advantage of the 3D hardware acceleration capabilities of modern systems to create cinematic-quality menus, in-game heads-up displays (HUDs), animated textures, mini-games, and even mobile games and applications.
“The Scaleform acquisition will further Autodesk’s ability to provide customers with more complete workflows to more rapidly develop immersive 3D and casual game experiences,” says Marc Stevens, vice president, Games, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “The Scaleform team will bring a wealth of expertise in creating highly optimized runtime solutions for PCs, consoles, and mobile devices. We expect the integration of Scaleform to allow us to innovate faster and help further improve the game creation process for online, console, and mobile development.”
Autodesk, a provider of 3D content creation tools, is adding to its games portfolio in response to a growing industry need for more efficient, integrated content creation solutions.
“Our combined technologies will not only provide game developers with an improved authoring environment and runtime solution, but will also apply to the broader interactive entertainment industry ranging from film to mobile to the Web,” notes Brendan Iribe, president and chief executive officer of Scaleform. “We will finally realize our long standing vision of integrating 2D and 3D authoring technology while continuing our commitment to deliver leading-edge, real-time graphics solutions to our customers.”
As part of the acquisition, Brendan Iribe--along with Scaleform’s chief technology officer, Michael Antonov, and chief operating officer, Marc Bennett--will join the leadership team in Autodesk Media & Entertainment. Scaleform offices will remain in Greenbelt, Md.