Late yesterday afternoon, social games developer Playdom announced that they’re investing $5 million in a Series A funding round for Argentinian social games startup MetroGames. To date, MetroGames has produced approximately 30 games, available to the public both via their own platform, as well as Facebook. The investment is slated to further expand MetroGames’ pipeline of games and development of it’s social gaming platform.
“We are very confident MetroGames will become one of the world leaders in social gaming during this next wave of explosive growth in the industry. We already have more than 30 games online across Facebook and our own social gaming platform and many more to be released during 2010. We are pleased Playdom has recognized our potential and chosen to invest in us,” said Damian Harburguer, CEO of MetroGames.
As part of the deal, Playdom CEO John Pleasants will join the MetroGames Board of Directors. Pleasants will now sit at the same table with existing board members, CEO & Founder Damian Harburguer and COO & Founder Julian Linsenberg.
“We are really excited to partner with such a promising company,” said Pleasants. “MetroGames has a proven track record for developing very appealing social games, so we are convinced that with Playdom’s help they will become a big player in the social gaming market.”
Playdom is often regarded as the ‘second child’ of Facebook developers. Still in the shadow of giant Zynga, Playdom still has a majority of it’s customers coming in from MySpace gaming (approximately 60 percent). This investment is Playdom’s second within one month on the Facebook side of social gaming. A few weeks back, Playdom announced the acquisition of Offbeat Creations, another strong Facebook social games developer. In fact, since Playdom acquired a massive $43 million in funding last November, they’ve made it very clear that they know they’re lacking in the Facebook department, and are making changes to address the issue.
Now let’s take a step back and look at this picture from 10,000 up. Playdom is a major player on the MySpace gaming portal. They’re working like gangbusters to match that presence on Facebook – through acquisitions and partnerships. Remember, at this year’s GDC, MySpace used the conference to announce their focus on gaming. If Playdom were to continue to expand and increase their MySpace presence, as well as ramp up their Facebook offerings, they could be miles ahead of current social gaming dominator Zynga, by having strong offerings on both platforms. My guess is that this is exactly what the plan is. Let’s stay tuned and see what’s in store for Playdom as it appears as though it’s not just Mafia Wars and Mobsters that Playdom and Zynga could be battling over.
Perlman describes the OnLive Game Portal as a companion to the full blown OnLive experience. Slated to launch ‘sometime’ this year, the OnLive Game Portal will offer a unique service – users can take advantage of OnLive’s streaming (cloud) service, allowing them to rent individual games and access demos. OnLive used the GDC platform to announce their full featured launch on June 17th, and will require a $14.95 monthly subscription fee. This subscription fee does not include the price of the games themselves. Perlman’s goal with this service is to offer ‘on-the-fence’ gamers access to the service, encouraging them to take the plunge and lay down their $15/month if they find the service of value.
A free-to-play, browser based strategy MMO, Excalibur Online is set in Roman Britain, respectively, before the rise of King Arthur and Camelot. In this disjointed, and dark time, players must sally forth to create their own domains. Challenges include gathering of resources, the building of cities, research and development of technologies, and naturally, raise an army, for both defense and offense. As with any MMO, players are challenged with quests, but they can also form alliances that will assist them in the ultimate campaign – to claim Excalibur as their own, and thus, unify the land. Naturally…when thousands of players around the world are all seeking the same ultimate goal – massive battles are bound to occur.
Not to be left in the dust, San Francisco/Berlin based 
From a users’ point of view, the new format should allow them to stay up-to-date with personalized game notifications, as well as discover new games through a system tailored recommendation system – including data from popular games charts and friends’ games. Users’ rating input will also affect future search and recommendations results.
Bigpoint, which is set to open a San Francisco office this year, will develop the game, and is projecting a “fall” opening at Syfy.com for a limited 30 day run. The final version of the game is slated to run on the 
The popular turn based strategy game PoxNora is now available on Facebook. Obviously capitalizing on their own gaming expertise, not only is Sony jumping into the Facebook gaming world with PoxNora, but they also planning on bringing a number of additional games to Facebook based on existing franchises and new intellectual property.
Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) recently announced that they’ve surpassed the 9 million player mark with 
“MindJolt has quickly become an ‘onramp’ to the Internet for the world’s independent game developers,” said DeWolfe, now CEO of MindJolt, in a press statement. “We’re building out the company to become the next generation platform for game developers. Our goal is to make it even easier for developers to get their games noticed and make more money from their work. At the same time we will deliver the most social and viral gaming experiences to our millions of users everywhere.”
Social games maker 
Patrick Streppel, executive member of the board, said “This New York office is a continuation of our international expansion. Thanks to the experience we have gained over the past few years in Europe, we are very well-equipped to tackle the North American market. Top-quality products planned for global publication will be announced and presented at the GDC.”
