German social mobile gaming network Scoreloop was acquired by RIM in July 2011.
At the time, it was a surprising move, given that BlackBerry didn't have a core gaming audience, while Scoreloop didn't support the BlackBerry OS.
Behind the scenes, however, the companies have been integrating well. Partly this is because gaming is now a core sector for RIM. The company has always been very aware of the power of social connections too, thanks to its BBM service.
Working together
The result is synergies between the companies are starting to become apparent, first on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Of course, this will happen moreso on RIM's future BB10 smartphones.
In the meantime, Scoreloop is continuing to support all mobile platforms, ranging from BlackBerry to iOS, Android, Window Phone and bada.
Giving an overview of the service at BlackBerry DevCon was Volker Hirsch, who's RIM's head of business development for games.
Entitled, 'The Power of Social Harnessing: Game Design for Compelling Interaction with Scoreloop', "The most effectively app discovery mechanism is a friend recommendation, that's what we're built around," said Hirsch.
He shoots, he scores
Indeed, Scoreloop now has more than 115 million users, including more than 25 million monthly active users.
Interestingly, it's powering some big titles too with Konami's free-to-play iOS (and Android) game Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 using Scoreloop for its peer-to-peer challenge system and leaderboards.
"You won't know that the game uses Scoreloop though," Hirsch said.
"One of our competitive advantages, compared to something like OpenFeint, is that developers don't have to use our UI if they don't want to."
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
News
Feb 7th, 2012
BBDevCon 2012: RIM's Sean Paul Taylor on providing robust game development tools for BlackBerry
News
Feb 7th, 2012
BBDevCon 2012: RIM's Chris Smith talks up the gaming potential of PlayBook 2.0 and BB10
Top Stories
Feature
May 17th, 2024
New release roundup: The best new mobile games from a battle royale to a console classic remake
Feature
May 16th, 2024
Behind the scenes: How adding sandwich offers to an idle merge game boosted three metrics at once
Events
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
MomoCon 2024 | North America | May 24th |
Morocco Gaming Expo | Africa | May 24th |
Popular Stories
Feature
May 14th, 2024
53 top mobile games in soft launch: Squad Busters, Battle Guys: Royale, Plants vs. Zombies 3, LEGO Hill Climb Adventures, and more
Feature
May 13th, 2024
Hot Five: Dubai's new Gaming Visa, April's mobile game charts, and Xbox studio closures
Feature
May 14th, 2024