Users of the MySpace.com social networking Website will be able to add multiplayer
games to their personal profile pages, and play them for free, from next year.
MySpace has struck a deal with Oberon Media Inc. to make available hundreds
of casual games from its portfolio, the companies said Tuesday.
MySpace provides a platform on which individuals or groups can build Web pages
known as personal profiles, showcasing their tastes or talents in music or other
aspects of multimedia creation. With the games channel MySpace plans, those
users will also be able to highlight their favorite games, and perhaps find
others to play them with.
Oberon supplies "white label" games that other sites can offer under
their own brand. Its distribution partners already include Microsoft Corp.,
Yahoo Inc., AOL LLC, and a number of mobile phone operators, it said.
In addition to the hundreds of games it already offers, Oberon is looking for
more, and will publish a software developers kit (SDK) to encourage the creation
of new titles for the multiplayer gaming platform it will build with MySpace.
MySpace, a unit of a unit of News Corp. subsidiary Fox Interactive Media Inc.,
hinted that the partnership could lead to the creation of other community gaming
features next year.
Oberon has expanded aggressively into new gaming markets in recent months,
buying mobile gaming company I-Play in June and interactive television game
developer PixelPlay in July.
