Announced late last week, social gaming ecosystem provider OpenFeint has officially announced their new OFX 2.0 freemium platform for iOS developers in a partnership with Adknowledge.
In a nutshell, this new freemium platform offers developers a pay-per-installation distribution service, thus allowing for more downloads, as well as monetization tools for both paying and non-paying customers. The method works like so: Game developers can increase their own applications downloads via purchasing inventory in said developers’ other various titles. These virtual purchases are designed to then in turn generate and increase installations of other titles. Players may earn virtual currency in these free-to-play games through “regular” channels, but with the addition of OFX 2.0 enabled titles, make take an alternative route, and earn currency through downloading (and presumably installing) the developers’ new app. Additionally, OFX 2.0 is targeted at non-paying players with the ultimate goal of converting them to a paying customer. Players may earn free virtual currency through the completion of simple actions – such as downloading an app. Once a users completes this action, game publishers cash in on a revenue share from OpenFeint. One of the beauties of this new platform is bypassing of any server work needed to be done by game developers.
Using the OFX 2.0 virtual goods economy, devs can manage an entire inventory of virtual goods over the air with no updates needed to the core game itself. Essentially, OpenFeint is bypassing the tedious structure of building a scalable server infrastructure to power virtual goods sales. OpenFeint is also providing a host of analytics tools to provide developers with actionable insights into what consumers are purchasing, what they’re not, and can adjust pricing levels accordingly, on the fly. “Mobile is an increasingly important part of our strategy and we’re excited to establish a footprint there using OpenFeint’s vast reach and Adknowledge’s proven games monetization solution,” said Suren Markosian, founder of CrowdStar, in a statement. Adknowledge general manager Chris Smutny adds, “The free-to-play phenomenon that became popular on Facebook is about to explode on mobile. OpenFeint is the perfect partner because they’re the leader in social game engagement technology on mobile platforms, and they have the critical mass of 4,800 games and 66 million players which creates an unparalleled opportunity to transform how mobile games are developed and monetized.” Editors Note: If any of this has vague overtones of Offerpal … well, you heard it here first. Let’s see how this one develops.
