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Tribune, Inc., creator and operator of massive online games, has confirmed that it has raised $40 Million for online games. The actual investors are not the ones previously rumoured (Granite Ventures).

Investors Time Warner and GGV Capital led the round besides Highland Capital Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Tudor Ventures and Columbia Capital. The Massachusetts based company is intensifying its properties including "Lord of the Rings Online", which is launched world wide. The raised money will be utilized to speed up the development of online games.

According to Jim Crowley, CEO of Turbine,

The Asia expansion alone will bring millions of subscribers to that game. Turbine also wants to fund the expansion of properties like Dungeons & Dragons Online, which on its own isn’t generating enough revenue to fund expansion. And then the company has a couple of more secret projects in the works.

I wonder what their secret projects are. They might be considering to take online games to console(s) and I’m not the only one to think that way. According to Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, it would be a big deal to take MMO game to the console which would help them compete head-to-head with MMO rivals such as Sony, NCSoft, etc. I think reaching a certain point can be a big deal but maintaining it while remaining in the true spirit of competition is a much bigger thing.