In a move designed to tilt the balance of power in the mobile gaming wars, OpenFeint has announced they will be bringing their social gaming platform to Google's Android phones later this summer.
Launch partners for the cross-platform shift include Glu, Digital Chocolate, and Hudson Entertainment, who already have several games available on the Android Market. Indie developers like RocketCat Games, makers of Hook Champ and Super QuickHook, have also pledged their support. On the business side of things, OpenFeint announced they recently received a capital investment from Chinese online gaming company The9.
Earlier this year Apple announced that they would provide matchmaking, leaderboard, and achievement services in their own social gaming network, called Game Center. When we spoke with OpenFeint founder and CEO Jason Citron at WWDC, he expressed confidence that they would find new markets and opportunities, even with Apple becoming involved in one aspect of their business.
Some of the Android features for OpenFeint include app discovery and mobile payment options. This, we assume, will be in addition to the microtransaction and virtual item management that is coming in OpenFeint X on the iPhone. Any developers who want to learn more should visit http://www.openfeint.com/developers/android.
5 Comments
Sounds like they are abandoning ship with apple's new Game Center bearing down on them. A wise decision, I think, because apple will make it practically impossible for competition to exist between social gaming platforms because it will (supposedly) be integrated into every app, thus making any other service opeifeint or plus+ can offer. Do you see anything else other than playstation network? How about xbox live? When apple (again supposedly) unifies the social gaming community on the iDevice, these companies will be out of a job
Can offer obsolete*
What they told us at GDC, and I would encourage you to listen to the interview in our podcast, is that developers will be able to add online social features through OpenFeint in addition to the new ones that will be provided by Game Center.
Game center will kill openfront so they wanna switch lol
Why wait for OpenFeint when Scoreloop is available today! Take a look at the leading Social Gaming SDK on Android with millions of users here: http://www.Scoreloop.com
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