Alex St. John Stepping Down No Big Deal for Wild Tangent

The gaming press is reporting the closing of Wild Tangent's internal development studio and Mike Peronto's replacing St John as company CEO. Alex will remain chairman of the company.

The closure of its own development studio is not too surprising, given that for the past several years, Wild Tangent has been mainly focused on game distribution/retail, which is increasingly based on a sponsorship/advertising and session-based model (Wild Coins), instead of the traditional download model. The benefit of having its own content arm is diminishing as it seeks out partnerships and outside content. It's been monetizing Runescape and a bunch of Korean MMOs in addition to traditional downloadabel casual games.

I was however intrigued about the CEO replacement so I reached out to Alex. As confident as he's always been, he told me it was nothing new and the press just made it sound like a big deal. Alex has been serving in the chairman/evangelist role for the past several years while Mike has been running daily operations. Alex said it's now the time to give Mike the title he deserves.