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BlueStacks partners with Big Fish on mobile game integration

Pact will allow Android developers to monetize casual game maker Big Fish's 4,000 PC games.

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App player BlueStacks has partnered with Big Fish to integrate the casual gaming network's 80 million devices with BlueStacks' network, which allows Android apps to play on Mac and PC devices.

The partnership, which was announced Wednesday at the Casual Connect conference in Kiev, will allow Android developers to monetize apps within Big Fish's platform of 4,000 PC games, which have been downloaded more than 2 billion times since the company launched in 2002.

"This throws open the doors of Big Fish's PC and Mac app store to mobile developers all over the world," Big Fish CEO Paul Thelen said in a statement. "It means extra distribution and monetization with no development work."

Mobile gaming has taken on greater prominence at the Seattle-based Big Fish, generating more than half of its revenue. Thelen said that many of the company's titles are being built exclusively for mobile.

"Bringing the industry's best mobile IP to our massive PC install-base that is hungry for new types of games, especially in the new free-to-play segment, makes a ton of sense," Thelen said. "The technology to do this without developers having to port their games is extremely complex."

BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma said this was one of the largest expansions for the San Jose, Calif.-based company, which launched in 2009.

"The Android and PC galaxies have been hurtling towards each other for at least a year now," BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma said. "Before today, it just wasn't worth it for Android developers to take the risk porting to PC. Now they've got not only a huge distribution opportunity, but Big Fish users are also extremely high-monetizing. The 'no work' aspect is just whipped cream on the latte."

BlueStacks reaches more than 100 million users on mobile, PCs, and TVs with Fonelink and App Player. Its distribution partners include Qualcomm, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, AMD, and Intel.