October 23rd, 2007
MySpace to launch online games channel
News Corp.-owned MySpace has announced a partnership with casual-game maker Oberon Games, part of Oberon Media, to create a dedicated “channel” on the social networking site, featuring social games.
Scheduled to launch in January, MySpace Games will allow members of the site to play games against each other, as well as embed game widgets onto their profiles. Although, in many ways this is nothing new, since many third-party widgets are web-based games (built using Flash), such as those from FlashFlashRevolution, a competing gaming social network I’ve written about a few times here on ZDNet.
More interestingly, Oberon will be providing a developer toolkit when the MySpace “channel” launches, according to Webware, which could help lower the barriers further for producing game widgets for the site.
As Om Malik writes: first it was music, then online video, and now gaming. Although I’d also add fashion too.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
