Mobile content is the bread and butter of PlayPhone. Major music labels, game publishers and entertainment companies all publish branded content across PlayPhone – and today, it has launched a social gaming platform for mobile gamers.
What’s the story?
PlayPhone Social is the name of the new platform. Much like the main PlayPhone offering, the name of the game here is advertising revenue. PlayPhone markets and publishes content from other producers – and it has a very healthy relationship with music studios and other content providers.
It offers mobile games developers the opportunity to shift their apps over PlayPhone, with the added bonus of being part of a social gaming platform. PlayPhone social is fairly focused on the “social” aspect here. Along with the expected features of chatting and messaging through Social, it wants to create gaming communities by letting people integrate buddy lists with their Facebook and Twitter friend lists – after which it will try to monetise these communities. Micro-payment capabilities are built into the platform, so devs can sell premium versions of the game, or offer in-game content or subscriptions.
And, importantly, any mobile gamer playing on the Social platform can play against another Social user – it doesn’t matter what kind of phone they’re using. At the moment, Android and iPhone are catered to, with other operating systems to come later.
What we think?
When it comes to mobile gaming, “social” is the today’s buzzword. And I can see why. I played a multiplayer air traffic control game against my brother recently on two smartphones, and it was fantastic fun. People like to be able to easily find, invite and play against other gamers. There are a lot of “others” – add-ons that build around the central multi-player experience. And these are the social aspects. It is assumed by social gaming platforms that people want to capability to chat with one another, create friends playlists, display achievements and badges and whatnot, etc. And, in fairness, people do like to do these kinds of things. But these are peripheral to being able to get a game – once the actual wireless multiplayer is painless and reliable, the rest will fall into place.
But for developers and gamers alike, the secret sauce here is the “cross platform” aspect. A developer can create a game for PlayPhone, and see it sold to both iPhone and Android. Such is the faith of PlayPhone in this model that has made the move social mobile gaming after a history of being completely dedicated to mobile content publishing. A lot of people have faith in it: AuroraFeint launched a pretty-much-identical upgrade to the OpenFeint platform recently (see our report). And all of this has been spurred by Apple’s own social gaming launch – even though it’s not cross-platform, it can still reach a tremendous audience.
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There is a lot of talk about social gaming lately, it’s getting huge right now. I think there will be a lot of opportunity for other big brands to get involved like McDonald’s have done on Farmville. Almost like a newer Second Life.