Playfish excels with quality cross-platform games
In the dimly-lit world of social networking applications, companies tend to privately trash each other — often quite accurately. You hear things like “so-and-so always sends spammy invites” or “so-and-so has a suspect means of making money.” Social game developer Playfish is one of the few big app companies that is universally praised by its peers. It has only built a few gaming applications, but it focuses on quality — nurturing each of its seven… Continue Reading
Facebook platform developers could see $500M in revenue this year
A growing number of game makers on Facebook are making money from virtual goods — from poker chips to virtual clothes that users can buy or earn while playing gaming applications with their friends on Facebook. The combined ecosystem of these game developers and other companies supplying services to them could generate half a billion dollars in revenue in 2009.
That’s significant, considering third-party applications on Facebook have been viewed as gimmicks making no significant revenue…. Continue Reading
Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M
Index Ventures just announced the closure of a $438.8 million fund intended to finance young biotechnology and cleantech portfolio companies. This is the sixth seed and early-stage fund the London-based firm has raised. Perhaps best know for its prescient investments in technologies like Skype, MySQL (sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion) and Betfair, Index has been relatively insulated from the economic downturn and is looking to expand its reach in the health care and… Continue Reading
GamesBeat 09 preview: an interview with Facebook’s top gaming dude
Our GamesBeat 2009 games conference on March 24 will explore the frontiers of gaming such as emerging gaming platforms. Facebook certainly qualifies as one of the hottest game platforms, now that it has 5,000 games. When the social network opened its platform up in 2007, it had no idea that games were going to become a big part of it. But now it’s up to Gareth Davis, the program manager for games in Facebook’s platform… Continue Reading
Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games
Playfish, a social gaming company that has four of the top ten games on Facebook, has raised $17 million in funding.
The deal shows that the intersection of games and social networking remains a hot sector in spite of the weakening economy.
Playfish came out of nowhere to become a leader in one of the hottest categories of the video game industry. It was founded in October, 2007, and launched its first game in December, 2007.
To date,… Continue Reading
Appssavvy snags $3.1M to connect advertisers, app developers
Even though social networking companies serve tens of millions of users, there’s still bizarrely little advertising on the most popular sites. Many big agencies and brands have experimented, but they’re still looking for better ways to target the users they want.
The latest company hoping to serve these advertisers is Appssavvy, a startup that sells direct advertising space on social media applications like Flixster, MesmoTV, and Playfish — most of which have a presence on major… Continue Reading
CasualCafe to launch Facebook games for casual players
CasualCafe has joined the ranks of game companies looking to make a fortune with games on Facebook. The Los Angeles company has launched its first two games, Spyde Solitaire and Burdaloo, for Facebook and is showing them off at Facebook’s F8 development conference.
Michael Scholz founded the company two years ago to create PC-based online games for the casual market. The games are based on Adobe’s Flash technology and run in a browser. As such, they… Continue Reading
Playfish nabs $1M for social gaming
Casual gaming startup Playfish has raised $1 million on its way to full venture funding, following its $3 million seed raised earlier this year, according to VentureWire.
Playfish is based in London, but is looking to raise money from Silicon Valley firms. The company took the bridge from Accel Partners to help it make contacts while continuing to develop new games.
All of Playfish’s three games are based on Facebook, and include in-game advertising. It currently has… Continue Reading
Playfish pulls in $3M seed for social gaming
Another social, casual gaming startup has brought in an initial investment for development, with several games lined up for release this year.
Playfish, which is based in London, already has a game called Who Has The Biggest Brain? on Facebook. It plans on monetizing through micro-transactions according to VentureWire, which also reported the funding.
The $3 million seed round was provided by a group of angel investors.