Focus Home Interactive buys Streets of Rage 4 publisher Dotemu • Eurogamer.net

Focus Home Interactive has bought Streets of Rage 4 publisher Dotemu for €38.5m (£32.6m), with an additional payment of up to €15m (£12.7m) conditional on certain revenue targets.

AA publisher Focus bought 77.5 percent of the share capital of Dotemu, the French company that focuses on developing and publishing retro-themed games.

Dotemu, which is made up of about 30 staff, worked alongside Lizardcube and Guard Crush Games to publish the critically-acclaimed Streets of Rage 4. Martin dished out a coveted Essential badge in Eurogamer’s Streets of Rage 4 review, calling it “a sequel that manages to best its forebears”. Streets of Rage 4 has now been played by two-and-a-half million people.

“Positioned in a very attractive market, Dotemu is a fast-growing company which achieved a turnover of €14.6m, and has a very ambitious growth plan for the years ahead,” Focus said of its shiny new acquisition.

Focus is on something of a spending spree. In June last year it bought Deck13, the German studio behind Lords of the Fallen and The Surge, and in April bought Streum On Studio, the maker of Space Hulk: Deathwing and Necromunda: Hired Gun.

And this spree looks set to continue. In its note to press today, Focus said “we are actively looking for other high-potential companies to accelerate our development and expand our offer”.

As for Dotemu, CEO Cyrille Imbert, who has 22.5 percent of the company’s shares, said it’ll launch the production of future remakes or sequels on licenses of first-generation 3D consoles – that is, the games of the early 2000s.

In the meantime, it’s working on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, a side-scrolling beat-em-up inspired by the retro likes of TMNT: Turtles In Time, and Metal Slug Tactics, a grid-based tactical warfare game for PC.