We've already heard from Plus+'s chief publishing officer Simon Jeffery, and Scoreloop's CEO Marc Gumpinger concerning their views about how Apple's Game Center will impact their businesses.

The most important reaction from the industry however was expected from Aurora Feint.

Its OpenFeint technology is the current market leader, enabled in 1,500 games and with 19 million unique users. To that extent, it has the most to lose from Apple's entrance into the market.

Our friends electric

According to CEO Jason Citron however, Game Center works hand-in-hand with the company's shift to online services and virtual item monetisation as embedded in its OpenFeint X technology.

"OpenFeint X is built on top of OpenFeint and in the future it will also sit on Apple's Game Center social graph, achievements and leaderboards so developers and gamers don't miss a step," said Citron.

"Apple is a key partner and we are delighted it's validated the first half of the OpenFeint vision so we can fulfill the second half with OpenFeint X and virtual goods-based social games. Our developers can be 100 percent assured we will continue to invest in OpenFeint so our 1,500 live games, 2,000 games in development and 19 million players have a flawless experience with OpenFeint and Game Center."

Two step

"OpenFeint has become a de facto standard in core online game services such as leaderboards and achievements," echoed Peter Relan, Aurora Feint's chairman.

"That's the first step, but the real opportunity is in allowing developers to create the next Zynga or CrowdStar, which will happen with the virtual goods social games platform we've created in OpenFeint X."

OpenFeint X features include a virtual goods store, detailed analytics, a game-specific currency wallet, and downloadable game assets so content can be pushed in real time. The

OpenFeint X developer program will be open to developers who work with OpenFeint to transition to Game Center.