NaturalMotion has acquired CSR Racing studio Boss Alien as it continues to expand its development operations.

Speaking to Develop, the company’s CEO Torsten Reil said it had bought the Brighton-based studio after CSR Racing had been making $12 million a month from in-app purchases for the developer.

The impressive figures make it the highest grossing game on the App Store currently, which Reil said was a justification of NaturalMotion’s goal to create high-end free-to-play titles.

He added that following the acquisition, the Boss Alien team would like grow as it looks to create a substantial development base in Brighton for the company.

“It’s really a vindication of our vision that games are moving towards high-end 3d free-to-play games,” he told Develop.

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“We think that wave one of gaming which was the 2D resource management game approach is coming to an end, and we’re starting to see games that are much richer in terms of visual quality and gameplay. CRS is a really good example of that.

“We’ve achieved all of those revenues organically. So they’ve not been achieved through user acquisition, which is what companies usually do. We think that if you go for high-end visuals and a really high quality gameplay experience, people want to download the game.

"You don’t have to push and advertise like crazy to compete for the same kind of user because the games look similar, we’re trying to make games look different.”

As well as acquiring Boss Alien and recently receiving $11m investment, Reil said the company was currently in talks with a number of other developers about further acquisitions and collaborating on new titles.

The NaturalMotion CEO also explained it was currently working on six titles across its Oxford, London, San Francisco and Brighton bases.