Soshi Games secures £300,000 funding to support mobile and tablet development
BIRMINGHAM-based games developer Soshi Games has secured a further £315,000 of funding, bringing the total investment into the business since it was founded three years ago, to £1.1m.
Midven, Finance Birmingham, Creative England and private investors have all participated in this latest funding round.
Soshi Games is the creator of Music Festivals Game, which enables players to build and manage their own music festival, and is the only game of its kind which integrates ‘real’ music. It has 230,000 monthly active users on Facebook and is gaining thousands of new installs every day.
The game helps artists to get discovered and provides new revenue streams for music rights holders; providing artist management, labels, merchandisers and media partners with a vehicle to monetise their social media fan bases.
The latest round of investment will enable development of mobile and tablet versions of four new music-themed games, one of which – a quiz based game, entitled ‘Clue The Music’ – is currently on test in New Zealand, before being rolled out across iOS platforms worldwide. Even in test form, 5% of people playing ‘Clue The Music’ are purchasing music from Apple’s iTunes simply as a result of playing the game.
Soshi, based at Innovation Birmingham Campus, was recently featured in the ‘Develop 100’ list of the top 100 games studios in the UK.
Cliff Dennett, CEO of Soshi Games said: “We’re gamifying the music industry. There is such a close connection between games, hand-held devices and music consumption and we’ve brought together the best of these to create a new business model.
“Our games enable popular acts to engage with their fan bases and earn money at the same time, but our aim is actually to launch a brand new artist globally through one of our games.”
Players of Music Festivals Game play the game for over 30 minutes a day. The player profile is very diverse in age and 63% are female.
Bands featured in Soshi’s games include Welsh heavy metal group ‘Bullet For My Valentine’, winner of ‘best live band’ in the Kerrang! Music Awards 2010, and Sheffield’s ‘Bring Me The Horizon’, ‘best British band’ winner at the same Kerrang! Awards in 2011.
Soshi also has deals with Clash Music, Kerrang Radio and Field Candy Tents.
“Typically, these partners are interested in the deeper level of engagement and innovative brand positioning we can offer, as well as data about the music preferences of our players,” added Dennett.
Soshi Games, which now employs 11 people, is a graduate of Innovation Birmingham’s Entrepreneurs for the Future (e4f) business incubation centre.
