DeNA Partners With Zedge To Help Attract More Players

With titles like Transformers Legends, The Gate and Lawless on its Mobage platform, DeNA has already enjoyed a great deal of success developing and publishing a wide range of mobile games. Still, the battle for the free time and money of mobile gamers is a fierce one, especially in the Android market, so any advantage can help.

DeNA sees just such an advantage coming from a partnership with Zedge in a deal officially announced today. The Zedge app highlights free games, ringtones and wallpapers to users based on their actions and interests, and it already has almost 100 million installs spread over 160 countries.

The Zedge app has been a fixture on the Google Play store’s Top 15 list for three years, and the company claims it is installed on 20 percent of Android phones in the U.S. It’s proven to be successful in attracting players willing to pay for additional content in free-to-play games, making it a logical fit with DeNA’s large catalog of games.

“Our collaboration in offering DeNA games in a highly relevant, tightly integrated and native fashion will benefit all involved,” Zedge CEO and co-founder Tom Arnoy said while announcing the partnership. “Since our recommendation engine connects extremely valuable users to our game advertisers, we expect this partnership to serve as a foundation for other distribution opportunities in the marketplace.”

It’s possible teaming with DeNA will also raise Zedge’s profile as a games recommendation engine since its emphasis in much of its self-promotion is on ringtones and wallpapers. Zedge is also available in the iOS App Store for both iPhone and iPad.