- Penn National Gaming has announced the establishment of Penn Game Studios.
- The studio will create content as well as in-house game design.
- The company is acquiring HitPoint Sudios and Lucky Point, Inc. to accelerate their plan.
All of a sudden betting related content is in huge demand. That’s why it isn’t much of a surprise that gaming giant Penn National (NASDAQ: PENN) is taking steps to accelerate their content development capabilities. Penn National has announced that they’re launching Penn Game Studios (PGS) to create an in-house content development team. In addition to content creation they’re going to put a greater emphasis on in-house game development to include real money casino games as well as casual gaming.
To advance their efforts, Penn National is acquiring HitPoint Studios and its spun-off real money gaming company, LuckyPoint. The deal is expected to closed in the near term. HitPoint is an independent game design and development studio founded in Massachusetts in 2008. They have since created more than fifty games for some major brands and publishers including Microsoft, Ellen DeGeneres, EA/PopCap, Disney, Google, and NBCUniversal. HitPoint has been a pioneer in developing realtime casual mobile games involving multiple players and currently runs the day-to-day live operations for multiple games using their proprietary technology stack.
In 2019, HitPoint spun out LuckyPoint to focus on real-money game development and the creation and operation of a remote gaming server. In addition to traditional online casino table games and slot machines, the LuckyPoint RGS brings a variety of gaming styles to desktop and mobile devices, including retro-style arcade games and puzzle games.
Paul Hake, CEO of HitPoint, is pleased to get involved with a major player like Penn National:
“We are thrilled to be joining Penn National and bringing our expertise to the Company’s interactive division. We look forward to adding our creativity, design and engineering skills to an already well-accomplished team at Penn National.”
As Hake’s comment intimates, Penn National already has their own interactive division and upon the completion of the deal the HitPoint and LuckyPoint employees will be integrated therein.
Jay Snowden, President & CEO of Penn National, gave some information on their plans for the beefed up interactive and content division:
“We are incredibly excited to be launching Penn Game Studios, which is another important step in our Company’s evolution into the leading omni-channel provider of retail and interactive gaming, sports betting and entertainment. We will now have the ability to create exclusive content for our audiences, further leverage the Barstool Sports brand and our database of 20 million mychoice customers, and create cross-marketing opportunities with our brick and mortar facilities.”
At the time of publication, Ross Everett has a long position in PENN.
