Inside Social Games

Leading social game developer SGN today is announcing an update to its most popular iPhone game, iBowl, adding live challenges to the game.

With the update, players will be able to challenge up to 3 others to a live bowling match using SGN’s “Wii-like” approach to playing iPhone games. Players will also be able to see their opponents take a turn live or play in real time, displaying the scores and progress of their opponents. iBowl has been growing in popularity in recent weeks – it’s the 4th most popular free iPhone app, and downloads are up 72% since December.

Earlier this month, SGN launched live challenges in iBasketball, and the company has said it plans to roll out live features to all of its iPhone games.

Originally focused only on social games for social networks like Facebook, SGN has extended its leadership to the iPhone platform as well. CEO Shervin Pishevar says that the company’s games have now been downloaded over 8 million times, and that one of the company’s games is now installed on 15% of all iPhones and iPod Touch devices.