Crowdstar Picks Up An Extra $12M To Fuel Its Move Onto Tablets, Mobile

Crowdstar, the social and mobile gaming company that has built several fashion-focused titles, just picked up another $12 million from existing investors to bring two products to market later this year.

As you might expect, both are mobile and Crowdstar CEO Jeffrey Tseng says the company now has a renewed focus on tablets. Competing companies like Finland’s Supercell have made tablet gaming their bread and butter, with higher engagement and player spending fueling revenue growth. We picked up the new funding through an SEC filing, but Tseng later confirmed it.

“So it’s the same internal investors, but I can’t talk much about the products,” Tseng said. He said that one will be fashion-focused like Top Girl and Social Girl while the other one will be different.

An early player on the Facebook platform, Crowdstar had to migrate onto iOS and Android like the rest of the industry. Zynga is making a similar transition, but as the legacy leader on Facebook, it’s had a tougher time involving job cuts and studio closures.

While it was never anywhere near the size of Zynga, Crowdstar has stayed small through the transition with 70 people overall. Back in 2011, when it was crossing over to iOS, the company’s previous CEO Peter Relan said Crowdstar would have a three-prong strategy involving mobile platforms, Facebook and international reach. But since then, they’ve shifted their entire focus to mobile.

“We’ve completely switched to mobile and the focus will be on tablets,” Tseng said. The new round brings Crowdstar’s overall funding to date to more than $46.5 million. It comes as marketing spending has risen on mobile platforms, bringing the cost of launching a new game into the millions of dollars.

“Platform are getting to the point where the fidelity and expectations have to be higher,” Tseng said.