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Gendai Games raises $1M in first round for game creation tools

Gendai Games, a startup with a game creation tool for the iPhone, has raised over $1 million in a first round of funding.

Techcrunch reported that the round was led by DFJ Mercury with participation from Steamboat Ventures, DFJ Frontier, and ff Asset Management. Angel investors include Paul Bricault, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Josh Resnick and and Mark Suster.

Gendai makes GameSalad, which lets non-programmers easily build and publish two-dimensional casual games on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It has been downloaded more than 70,000 times in nine months, and there are now more than 800 games in the App Store built with Gendai’s tools. The company’s simple approach contrasts with the much larger 3D graphics game creation tools from Unity Technologies. It isn’t a lot of money to raise, but it shows that investors are starting to pay more attention to the promising mobile games market.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.