Kiwi nets $15M in funding to build meatier mobile games

Mobile game maker Kiwi has raised $15 million from investors like Northgate Capital, Sequoia Capital and DFJ in its most recent round of funding as the company seeks to transition from a casual game developer to a company that releases fewer, meatier AAA mobile titles every year. The news comes courtesy of a Re/code report that sheds light on Kiwi's intent to try and build character-driven, "console-esque" games for mobile. Currently, Kiwi produces casual sim games like Shipwrecked and Brightwood Adventure for Android, iOS and the Amazon Appstore. It was also one of the first Western developers to put its mobile games on the popular South Korean KakaoTalk mobile messaging platform. The Palo Alto-based company was founded in 2011 by former Playdom developers, and had raised total of $9 million in funding as of last year from sources like Sequoia Capital and Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang.