Red Robot Labs announced today its entrance into the Asian market though a strategic partnership with the Taiwan-based company Next Media. Next Media Animation, an associated company of Next Media Group, plans to build on Red Robot's proprietary R2 mobile gaming platform, while Red Robot will leverage Next Media's market expertise to launch Life Is Crime in Asia. In addition to being the first third-party studio to build on the platform, Next Media has also invested $5 million dollars to accelerate the development of location-based gaming in Asia.

"As a location-based platform company looking to expand globally, Asia was the obvious next step for us," said Mike Ouye, Co-founder and CEO of Red Robot Labs. "After seeing Next Media's dedication to the creation of innovative content so similarly mirrored our own business objectives, we knew we had to work with them. I have no doubt they'll build cool games on our platform. They are the first of many third party studios that will be building location-based games on R2."

The Next Media partnership and Asia expansion is the next aggressive step in Red Robot's global growth. It follows their December entrance into the UK through the acquisition of Supermono and the January debut of Life is Crime on iOS. The game's location-based play is ideal for the fast-growing Asian gaming market, with its dense urban centers and sizable MMO fan base.

"Next Media Animation is known for creating addictive content. We have been looking to expand into location-based gaming, but we were waiting for the right technology. We found it in Red Robot's R2 platform. We can't wait to let our creatives loose on their cutting-edge technology to see what we can do," said Jimmy Lai, Chairman of Next Media.

Red Robot Labs was formed in January 2011 and released their first location-based, mobile game, Life Is Crime, on Android in August at the Penny Arcade Expo. The game now boasts communities throughout the UK, Canada and the United States and has enjoyed continued success as one of the top 10 highest grossing Android apps for five months, with well over a million downloads. Life is Crime hit No. 2 on the iTunes Free Apps chart the week of its release. The game will debut in Hong Kong on March 21, followed by Taiwan & Japan.

About Red Robot Labs

Red Robot Labs is a mobile gaming start-up located in Palo Alto, California. The company was founded in January 2011 by a team of industry veterans who are passionate about creating a platform for innovative, highly polished mobile-social games. Its location-based mobile crime game, Life Is Crime for Android and iOS was named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top 10 Apps of 2011 and has been played by millions of gamers around the globe. CEO and Co-founder Mike Ouye previously ran monetization and revenue for social gaming start-ups Playdom and Crowdstar and revenue for leading performance ad network Adteractive. Investors include Chamath Palihapitiya founder of the Social+Capital Partnership, Rick Thompson co-founder of Playdom, Benchmark Capital and Shasta Ventures.