Halfbrick Studios acquires Onan Games for quick cross-platform ports

Australia’s Halfbrick Studios, maker of the popular Fruit Ninja mobile game, has acquired Onan Games so that it can publish titles across platforms more quickly.

The Brisbane, Australia-based Halfbrick has had some huge hits in recent years with Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. So it is buying Valencia, Spain-based Onan Games for an undisclosed price to get access to its Mandreel technology. That’s one way to solve a problem that many game makers have: how to quickly republish a hit game across many platforms.

Mandreel enables a developer to take a single C++ code base for a game and then republish it across iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Android, Flash, and HTML5.

Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo said, “Onan has created something that is incredibly powerful in such a fast-paced industry. It’s our goal to maximize reach and bring our games to new fans, and we welcome Onan into the Halfbrick family knowing that they will help us achieve exactly that.”

Mandreel is currently being used to port games to web sites via Flash and HTML5. The technology will be used to improve distribution for Halfbrick titles such as Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride.

“We want to see our technology used by the best and most creative developers, and Halfbrick is undoubtedly one of the top studios in the world,” said Miguel Pastor, Onan Games CEO. “We can’t wait to see what awesome new ideas and projects will arise in the coming months.”

Halfbrick plans to license Mandreel to customers in the near future as well. Halfbrick was founded in 2001 while Onan Games was founded in 2011.