First customer is a biggie: Liveware Worldwide, maker of the Harvest Moon franchise.
The launch of the PlayPhone Social platform marks a dramatic move into the OpenFeint/Scoreloop space for the US content giant.
It's clearly a big deal for PlayPhone, which got its start with traditional D2C activity and then moved into B2B services, powering mobile plays for Wal-mart, Disney, Nickelodeon and others.
They were great clients, but word has it the subscriber take-up was poor.
However, PlayPhone does have consumer nous and a serious backend platform through which to reach end users.
PlayPhone Social will let consumers participate in social games with friends across the iPhone, Android, and web-based Flash platforms.
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Features include player achievements, friends lists and invites, and integration with Twitter and Facebook.
Liveware Worldwide will presumbaly use the platform to take its Harvest Moon franchise into mobile and web.
The game is a huge hit on Nintendo and made its iPhone debut last year with the puzzler spinoff Harvest Moon Frantic Farming.
Ron Czerny, PlayPhone’s CEO said: “We were looking for something to change the company’s direction. We didn’t seen anything over the last two years, but you see social games on the web making millions of dollars a month.
"This is a big, big step for us in changing the way mobile games are way distributed and sold on mobile devices.”
The games will be free to download and play, but will charge for virtual goods, and PlayPhone will get a cut of those revenues.
The software development kit includes access to carrier billing, premium SMS billing, credit cards and PayPal.
