MUMBAI: Marking the company‘s entry into the social gaming space, MTV Networks has acquired Social Express Inc, a social gaming development company.

MTV Networks will develop social games based on original Intellectual Property (IP) as well as shows and characters from MTV, Nickelodeon and its other brands. The first game would be launched in the third quarter of this year.
 
MTV Networks will also leverage Social Express‘s expertise to launch a publishing platform for independent game developers.

"Social gaming is one of the biggest drivers of the explosive growth in social media - it‘s fun, it‘s engaging, and it‘s shareable," said MTV Networks Chairman Judy McGrath. "Social Express brings us strong experience and know-how in this burgeoning space which we‘ll supercharge with the IP and scale of Nickelodeon and other MTV Networks brands to create great new social gaming experiences for our fans and cool tools for independent developers as well.
 
Social Express will be integrated into Nickelodeon Digital. While Social Express co-founder and CEO Tony Espinoza will oversee the social gaming strategy and development as vice president and general manager of social gaming for MTV Networks‘ Nickelodeon Kids & Family Group, Neil Souza, co-founder of Social Express and FoulPlay Media will be vice president of Technology, Social Games.
Both will report to senior vice president and general manager of Games, Nickelodeon Kids & Family Group Dave Williams who reports to Stephen Youngwood executive vice president for Digital, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids & Family Group.

Social Express‘s management team boasts of former executives and developers from Apple, AOL, Yahoo! and Zynga.

Walt Disney Co. recently acquired Tapulous, a maker of iPhone games, showing heated action in the online and mobile gaming businesses.