As the news concerning ngmoco's purchase of Freeverse is digested by the mobile gaming industry, it's been interesting to gauge the reaction of various parts of the community.

One studio that's been close to Freeverse over the years is fellow Mac turned iPhone developer Pangea.

Its president and CEO Brian Greenstone is pleased for Freeverse but unsure about the longer term implications of the deal.

"I'm actually kinda bummed to see Freeverse absorbed because I've known those guys for many years and they're a great bunch of people and often when companies get taken over by the mothership they're never the same," he explains.

This uncertainly extends to the rise of the freemium model Freeverse (and ngmoco) will now be operating under.

"[It] could be bad for developers doing the regular paid app model, but we'll have to see how it goes. Not all games make sense as in-app purchase content," Greenstone ponders.

Bulking up for free

Another developer with an angle on the deal is Secret Exit, which was working with ngmoco until the company's change of business model.

Co-founder Jani Kahrama wonders how the weight of the combined companies will change the App Store.

"It will be interesting to see if freemium content can capture an increased market share from regular paid content," he says.

"This deal certainly won't make life any easier for traditional publishing models, but freemium doesn't apply well to all game genres and audiences so there's no reason for panic."

Joined together

Coming from a strong business background, Markus Nigrin of Windmill Apps sees strong synergies in the deal.

"Freeverse has a great lineup of apps that fit very nicely into this model and can be leveraged by ngmoco," he explains.

He says the larger significance of the deal will be the potential for ngmoco to accelerate its freemium model with iPhone game cross-promotion, as well as extension of platforms onto Facebook and other social networks.

"I bet we will see more initiatives in the social gaming segment by ngmoco, which is a hot topic these days. I think it has the customer base as well as the technology to do some serious damage in this space," he predicts.

Sweet deal

Another entrepreneur is Trip Hawkins, Digital Chocolate's president.

"I know the management at both companies. They're good people who make good games. They will certainly be stronger combined than they were separately," he commented

Reflected joy

Even Marc Gumpinger, CEO of social networking provider Scoreloop, which is a direct rival to ngmoco's Plus+ social networking platform had only positive things to say about the deal.

"I think ngmoco has bought into great game development talent with Freeverse, so ngmoco can become an even more successful publisher," he commented.

Of course, he did manage to get a plug in for his tech too.

"Ngmoco has its own social platform to engage its users - which is very important for the freemium model - and other publishers will have to come up with their own social platform as well.

"By the way, Scoreloop offers exactly this: a proven white label social infrastructure that publishers can use as their own platform."

You can read further analysis of why the deal is good for Freeverse and ngmoco here.