And more specifically, why it's not just about iPhone.
This morning, iPhone social gaming platform Scoreloop announced the appointment of former Hands-On and Connect2Media man Volker Hirsch as a strategic advisor.
ME talked to Hirsch in advance of the announcement, to find out what he sees in the company, and the challenges facing it. The news comes shortly after he left Connect2Media to help relaunch UK mobile games studio Blue Beck.
"We resurrected Blue Beck to pursue an ambition of bringing a more social element back to gaming," he says. "Before the advent of the personal computer, every game people played was social. Football, cards, board games, Twister... Social interaction while playing was a key component."
That's something Scoreloop has been providing for iPhone developers for several months now, competing with platforms like OpenFeint, Plus+ and Agon Online to sign up developers to use its technology.
"At Blue Beck, the verdict from my techies was that Scoreloop is the most solid one," says Hirsch.
"Its two core propositions - challenges and virtual currency - are very important when it comes to games and the business models around games in the near future. It's where they beat everyone else hands-down. And I was extremely impressed with the team."
Hirsch says he's aiming to bring his "decade of pain in the games space" to help the company, as well as his experience looking at the mobile entertainment industry from a wider viewpoint than pure gaming.
He's also got experience of mergers and acquisitions though - will that prove an advantage if the social games platforms space consolidates?
"If you look at the space, there is some room for consolidation," he says. "Scoreloop is well financed, so will certainly be a contender in that space, and they have the upper hand in some of the technology issues. But their solution also appears to be working across different platforms more easily."
This could be interesting. Some of those rivals focus purely on iPhone games at the moment, but it seems Scoreloop is looking to support games on other mobile and non-mobile platforms too.
"Users increasingly switch between screens, and while this may be a little further out, in principle there's no reason why you shouldn't be deploying this kind of functionality across other digital destinations," says Hirsch.
Is the elephant in the social platforms room Apple, though? For now, it seems content to let the different social games firms scrap it out for developer signups, without showing any urge to launch its own Xbox Live type service.
"Apple has always shied away from a services model," says Hirsch, although he accepts that for Scoreloop and its rivals, closely adhering to Apple's developer guidelines is a necessity.
Advertisement
