ActiveVideo Networks has announced that it has completed the acquisition of TAG Networks, adding the network game platform to its CloudTV interactive streaming platform.
The acquisition extends ActiveVideo’s CloudTV development platform to include games development. The combined entity leverages TAG Networks’ technology and content portfolio with ActiveVideo’s CloudTV to create a platform that supports both casual and twitch or fast-motion games.
“We believe that the games category, which exceeds $25 billion (€19.4 million), is among the most significant growth opportunities for our cable, programmer and CE manufacturer customers,” said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo Networks, in a statement.
In conjunction with the acquisition, TAG Networks’ management team and staff have been relocated to ActiveVideo’s corporate headquarters in San Jose.
“TAG and ActiveVideo Networks have successfully collaborated for many years and together we have proven the value of games as drivers of television interactivity,” said Sangita Verma, CEO and founder of TAG Networks “Now as a part of the ActiveVideo team, we’re looking forward to expanding our vision and making the TAG games platform available to other games developers and content owners.”
Earlier this year, TAG announced that its games-on-demand channel was the stickiest channel on Oceanic Time Warner Cable, according to TNS set-top box data. The TNS Average Daily Minutes (Viewed) data for 2009 indicated that TAG households averaged 116.5 minutes per day with the channel. TAG Networks also recently announced that it had established an industry record for streaming games density and scalability by supporting 2,000 concurrent MPEG game streams at 1.25 Mbps with a single off-the-shelf 1RU dual quad-core server.
TAG is currently deployed to hundreds of thousands of households throughout the US via digital cable. Additional deployments and trials are slated over the next 12 months.
