Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine Acquires Social Gaming Start-up Bossa Studios

LONDON -- Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine TV production company has acquired the London-based social gaming startup, Bossa Studios, for an undisclosed fee according to The Guardian.

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The acquisition is Shine Group's first foray into the nascent social gaming market, and comes just months after News Corp. bought Shine for $673m.

Based in east London, Bossa Studios creates games for social networking sites including Facebook and MySpace. Eleven-month old Bossa Studios is set to unveil its first Facebook game, Monstermind, next week.

Elisabeth Murdoch said on Friday: "As a global content company, we are committed to producing exceptional experiences across multiple platforms and developing direct-to-consumer models.

"We have long identified social gaming as a critical component to this strategy, and in Bossa Studios we discovered an entrepreneurial, creative team that shared our passion for creative excellence. They have bold ideas for this space which we naturally welcome and will be a significant addition to the Shine Group."

Henrique Olifiers, a co-founder of Bossa Studios, said: "We are delighted to be both launching Monstermind and joining the Shine Group.

"Shine has shown a great support for Bossa Studio's creative-led mission and together, in addition to launching entirely new concepts, we hope to offer hundreds of millions of TV viewers and social gamers the opportunity to experience some their most-loved programs in an entirely fresh, immersive way."