Social Gaming Roundup: Booyah, Pre-Paid Cards, iPad, & More

Booyah Lands $20 Million, Partners with Google - Monday, mobile and social game developer Booyah announced the closing of a $20 million round of financing led by global venture firm, Accel Partners. Additional investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures. Moreover, investor Jim Breyer was added to the company's Board of Directors. Not two days later, Booyah also announced a new partnership with Google at the I/O Conference, making them the first partner of Google's Places Web Service feature. To add to the company's successes, the mobile developers popular location-based title MyTown is also noted to have, now, over 2.1 million users. Hands-On Mobile Expands - Mobile games company, Hands-On Mobile, Inc. announced the hiring former Linden Lab Vice President of Strategy and Emerging Business, Judy Wade, as the company's new president and CEO where she will be tasked with growing the developer's presence on both mobile and social platforms. Additionally, Hands-On Mobile has also announced that it will be moving into the the latter platform with the help of social developer FunClick. Pre-Paid Cards Top Sales - NPD Group released an interesting bit of information this past week, stating that of all video game accessories in the United States, pre-paid points cards for online games and services (i.e. virtual currency on Xbox Live) are the number one seller. Among these cards, the top tamale was the 1600 Microsoft Points card that costs $20. Considering the US spent over $1 billion in virtual goods last year, the high sale of virtual currency cards is hardly surprising. OpenFeint Partners with Hudson Soft - News from across the sea as Japanese developer Hudson Soft announced the addition of OpenFeint to its collection of iPhone titles. With the new partnership, Hudson will not only integrate the standard achievement and leaderboard systems that come with the social platform, but will also add five games to OpenFeint's FreeGameoftheDay.com including Aqua Forest 2, Catch the Egg, Haunted Pics, Shooting Watch, and World RPS. iPad Store Goes Global - Though the international release of the iPad was delayed initially, it looks like the Apple iPad Store is now appearing across the globe. According to TechCrunch, it looks to be a worldwide release and there has been confirmation in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Israel, France, the Philippines, and New Zealand. PayPal Announces Mobile Payments Library for Android - Online payment service, PayPal, announced the Mobile Payments Library for the Android mobile device. Through the platform, developers can integrate PayPal payments into their Android apps, effectively allowing for in-app transactions. As far as credit card transactions go, these will, of course, be handled through PayPal themselves. Eliminate Offers Double Credit Weekend - According to TouchArcade, mainstream first-person shooters (i.e. Call of Duty) have often offered their players extra experience points for playing multiplayer bouts during certain weekends. Well, developer ngmoco is taking a page out of this book offering its players "double credit compensation," until Monday at 12pm PST, for the popular, freemium iPhone title, Eliminate. Players that play over the next few days will earn double points per deathmatch. However, the same cannot be said for cooperative play. Apple Selling Over 200,000 iPads a Week - Here's a little tid bit of information from All Things Digital that has come to light regarding the impressive success of the new Apple iPad: Apparently, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, the iPad is selling over 200,000 units per week. Already, this is greater than the Mac in the U.S. and is closing the gap on the iPhone 3GS. As for the data behind these numbers, it is noted that it will be revealed at the iPad Games Summit this June.

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Social Gaming Roundup: Booyah, Pre-Paid Cards, iPad, & More

Christopher Mack

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Christopher Mack