Earlier today, social network hi5 announced its new partnership with virtual currency monetization company PlaySpan. As part of the deal, hi5 will integrate PlaySpan’s PayByCash and Ultimate Game Card payment services that together will open up 80 or so different payment methods to the hi5 user base.

With the new integration, users will now be granted yet another means to acquire the network’s brand new hi5 Coins. Users can then purchase both premium virtual goods and services with the hi5 virtual currency.

“Our partnership offers users a very flexible means to purchase hi5 Coins,” says Anil Dharni, Vice President of Products at hi5. In a recent partnership between hi5 and Paymo, the mobile payment company reported that 75% of internet users do not own a credit card. With the addition of PlaySpan’s Ultimate Game Card to hi5’s payment options, users will now gain the ability to use retail value cards (as well as other methods) throughout North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Both hi5 and PlaySpan have been busy signing up more partners as of late. In addition to its recent partnership with Paymo, hi5 also recently announced a partnership with Mochi Media to expand its game library. PlaySpan says subsidiary PayByCash will be expanding to meet the extra demand coming from hi5′s 62 million worldwide members.

The companies say they expect to add support for transactions in Turkey, Thailand, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, by the end of this month.

Increasingly, online gaming companies have sought alternatives to credit cards when it comes to collecting online payments. Most recently, Rixty, an alternative online payment platform, partnered with Coinstar in an effort to turn loose change into virtual currency.  The companies will focus on the teen demographic, since many teens don’t own credit cards.

Under the new partnership, users will be able to visit any Coinstar kiosk (say, at a grocery store) and turn their loose change into in-game virtual currency. Here’s how it works: After they put their change into the machine, they may select a Rixty voucher as a way to cash out their change. Each voucher will contain a unique PIN number, which is redeemable through their online accounts. Once redeemed, the virtual currency can be used for anything (virtual goods, subscriptions, etc.) within Rixty’s partner platforms.

“We want to focus on providing a payment mechanism that lets young users meet their own needs without extra fees, that is also convenient and economical,” said Ted Sorom, CEO of Rixty. “We feel everything on the marketplace today fails on one of those counts. Credit cards and mobile phones aren’t youth-controlled, and prepaid credit cards are very expensive and have a lot of fees for reloading. Everything in the marketplace today doesn’t really meet the spending needs of the youth consumer.”

Americans have far more loose change than people might expect. According to Coinstar, there is around $10.5 billion in loose change within American households today, with approximately $90 in each home on average. Rixty is banking on the 32 million users within their target audience of 13-24 to find (and start spending) some of that money.

At the moment, Rixty competes with a number of other platforms, including vSide, GamesCampus, Perfect World, and Ntreev. According to Sorom, the company is looking to support around 50 games and virtual worlds with up to 15 different partners.

[via Virtual Goods News]

I’ve taken a few laps around the gaming industry block, and during that time I’ve seen many, many “next big things”. Whether it was Multimedia, add-on gadgets, phantom machines actually called The Phantom, new genres, new markets, new audiences, next big things always start with a bang and end with a fizzle, or at least a mild “pop”. So while others are excitedly talking up the new new thing over drinks at GDC, I’m often more conservative with my enthusiasm, especially when someone is touting the potential of games to finally “break out” into the mainstream and “bring gaming to a whole new audience” again.

There’s a tendency, especially when the seven digit numbers start to fly, for people to begin making wild predictions, and projecting yesterday’s growth on an infinite curve that positively proves that in only a few years the market for games will be the entire human population of the planet, leaving only our pets as the next great untapped audience.

Given that, it’s been nothing short of shocking for me to realize that given the events of the last few weeks I’m actually beginning to wonder if the future for social platform gaming may actually turn out to rosy enough that our dogs and cats will indeed be a target market for social entertainment in the next few years.

There have been a few concrete events in the last couple of weeks that have given me a reason to have some genuine optimism. First is Facebook Connect, which strikes me as proof positive that Facebook is, for the present at least, genuinely committed to supporting application developers in a (mostly) open manner that will everyone to continue to make a decent profit for the (foreseeable) future. (There’s that conservative side speaking again.) Allowing everyone to win may seem like an obvious strategy, but the history of games is one where the person providing you with the platform is also one of your biggest competitors. Sony, Nintendo, Sega, and even Microsoft, all had divisions making “first party” games that were trying to eat as much of the market as possible even while they were charging everyone else for the privilege of publishing on their platform. Even the Wii, last year’s great mainstream hope of the living room, is utterly dominated by titles made by Nintendo.

All boats rise, but when it’s a tide of money you’re floating on it can be tempting to build a big fat dam.

But Facebook is going a step beyond, providing developers with tools to reach out so that they can bring more users in.

The other surprising news was finding out that Apple was tearing down a number of the barriers that I thought might hold back the iPhone from actually becoming a successful integrated platform for social gaming. First we got the roll out of “FaceBook” connect, meaning that you can now share your data with something and someone that isn’t being gated by Apple. They’ve also opened the platform just enough to allow developers to start implementing business models that make actual financial sense. Allowing for virtual goods means there’s a real reason for your app to be free, even if Apple still wants a taste of every transaction.

I thought Apple would get there eventually. (They usually do, sooner or later.) But not until after they’d milked the current model for all it’s worth. I was guessing we’d start to see some movement in the late summer. I also thought it would come with enough limitations so that it would seem like things were moving forward in the press release while practically they weren’t going anywhere at all. But it seems this is for real, and if the rumored $100 iPhone turns out to be real, then maybe you can afford to get one for your dog.

The difference this time could be that the games themselves are the driver anymore, but the platform itself. So instead of hoping games will find the audience, we’re finally a mature enough industry that it can work the other way around.

Of course no market expands forever. Sooner or later “explosive” growth slumps back down to simply “rapid”, and then down to the dreaded “stable”. And that too may happen sooner than I think. But until then, I think I’m going to try and stay positive.

Andrew Mayer is a Social Gaming and User Experience Consultant with over seventeen years of experience in the games industry.

As the iPhone App Store enjoys tremendous growth overall, comScore has just released numbers that detail what applications have been thriving the most. The report gives marketers a much better look at the actual audience size of apps from the iPhone app store.

One interesting metric reported was the penetration rates of the App Store’s Top 25 apps within the United States. These rates reflect the number of people that have downloaded the app as a portion of overall devices in use:

Within the chart, 12 out of the 25 apps were games.  Tap Tap Revenge topped the charts overall, boasting a 32 percent penetration rate. A major social game, iBowl (from SGN) came in sixth place at 24 percent.

These numbers, combined with recent projections by mobile advertising network Admob, can help in estimating both advertising and premium service revenues. According to Admob’s numbers, Apple’s mobile user base for the U.S. is around 15 million. As a result, Tap Tap Revenge has approximately 4.8 million users.

comScore also compared time spent searching for various types of content between iPhone app users and average Internet users. In short, those using the iPhone tend to spend more time in retail, conversational media, entertainment, sports, and search/navigation.

While these numbers provide more useful information than those reported in the past, they’re far from perfect. Some other questions remain unanswered: How many uninstalls were there? Since most of the apps on the list were free, how did the paid apps do specifically? How long were the apps used?

Nonetheless, these numbers alone have long been sought after by developers and marketers alike.

[via VentureBeat]

Though there have only been a few games developed on top of Twitter so far, we are now seeing more and more of them. Large Animal Games, the developer of social games like Lucky Strike Lanes, has just released a new game called Twivial that is built around the “following” feature of Twitter. As the name suggests, it is a quiz game.

Assuming you have a Twitter account, all you need do is follow @twivia_bot. Every 15 minutes, twivia_bot will begin a new round by updating its status with a question. From movies to music (to pretty much anything), the question topics vary widely.

Here’s how the game works: When you are posed the question, and you wish to answer it, you can simply direct message the answer to twivia_bot. You can also visit Twivial.com.  Once there, simply type in your answer and click “guess.” The game’s coding will be able to recognize answers that are relatively similar to the correct answer. Each player gets two guesses per round. There is a total of 240 points available for those who answer correctly. The faster you answer, the more of those available points you earn. If you answer before anyone else, you can move into bonus rounds afterwards. Should players answer incorrectly, they will be given the proper answer.

Twivial is a nice procrastination-inducing tool for Twitter’s power users, though it’s not meant to be a stand-alone title. Instead, it’s supposed to be mixed in with the plethora of games (and people) an individual user may be following.

The game has a few downsides. One is that each round feels very independent of the others. In other words, each question feels like its own little mini-game rather than many questions making up one game.

Although the game has some leaderboards that show statistics such as the total accumulation of player points all-time, it would be nice (especially for attracting new players) to have daily games and track those as well. The game also lacks some basic social features, such as the ability to know who you are playing. Even those trivia games you play at restaurants display the other players.

Overall, Twivial is a good addition to the Twitter platform. While the game needs to add some social features, Twivial is constantly being updated and changed, so we could see some changes happen in the future.

Have you ever played the games in the activity sections of magazines or travel kits? Aside from the word finds and crossword puzzles, you may remember the games in which you search for differences between two images. Suffice to say, they were enjoyable in that particular setting, but this application, Spot the Difference by Lunatic Games, takes the game out of the magazine and plops it into Facebook.

If you’ve ever played one of these games before, you’ll be able to guess how the app works. Essentially, the player is shown a pair of real photographs that has been manipulated with PhotoShop, and the player must click on the five differences within the two pictures within a set amount of time. However, should the player click incorrectly, they lose time.

As users play, they earn points for each item they find, and if they find all five items before time runs out, they proceed to the next image. Of course, if you get stuck, the designers have included some “clues” to help the player out at the cost of some time and a few points, but they aren’t so much “clues” as they are freebie life-lines (they circle one of the differences for you).

The game also looks fairly clean, with some decent sound effects, and polished Flash work (not to mention some pretty good photo manipulation). However, the game is so simple that it is only really entertaining for a few minutes, like when you are in that procrastinating mood.

Unfortunately, Spot the Difference also has a couple big annoyances. The first of these is that some of the differences between images are so subtle that it is a royal pain finding them (i.e. a three or four pixel wide line that is missing). Luckily, most of the differences aren’t that bad, but there are enough to be annoying.

However, the game’s artificial play limits are also pretty annoying (though clearly intentional). Players are limited to the number of times they can play the game per day. Once you are out of plays, you can either challenge friends or pay for one of the advertisements on the game. However, that’s all part of the design of course, as the game is steadily growing in monthly active users on Facebook.

Back in December, we examined Sony’s attempt to catch up with Microsoft and Nintendo in the console wars with its realistic virtual world, PlayStation Home.  Since this product involved more than 18 months of development time, people have begged the question: How is Home doing now?

Despite the fact Home received some negative reviews when it first launched, it has garnered a fairly large user base since then. Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home for the United States, gave an update about the virtual world at the Game Developers Conference.

Buser talked primarily about developer opportunities within Home. For starters, he said Sony would launch at least three promotional spaces a month, providing a new area for players to interact with friends and explore Home more deeply. Buser said that building a strong community will separate Home from competitor products, according to Eurogamer.

“If you look at some of our competition, they really struggle with the idea of community and how to foster a community on their platform,” he says. “Home is the true community for PlayStation 3.”

Reinforcing this statement, he showcased a “good space” within Home, which had around 250,000 visits weekly in the U.S., with 75 percent of users spending more than 10 minutes there.

He also noted that PlayStation Home currently has more than five million worldwide users (2.2 million within the U.S.). Their average playtime within the virtual world is about 40 minutes. While Buser did not disclose how many unique or concurrent users Home has attracted, Sony has invested a lot of time and money into Home. One can only hope it continues to grow.

Last week, major global social network hi5 reportedly laid off about half of its 100 person staff after a potential large funding round fell through at the last moment. From the sound of things, hi5 kept the groups that have been working on its virtual currency system in tact, and is essentially reorganizing around a gaming portal business model. It appears that hi5 is betting it can monetize its international audience much better through transactions than it ever could through advertising.

It was just last month that hi5 announced that it had created a universal virtual currency, hi5 Coins, for its application platform. Any developer can integrate hi5 Coints into their applications. Meanwhile, in February hi5 also launched a Flash games portal from developers like Arkadium and others. However, unlike other Flash portals on social networks, hi5 has integrated the games directly into the site’s communication channels and virtual currency system.

In order to make it easier for users to purchase the new currency, hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo, a global mobile payments network. Now, Hi5 users can purchase hi5 Coins via their mobile phones without the use of a credit card in 24 countries. The move reflects a general industry trend: purchases of online goods without the use of credit cards have grown significantly. In fact, Paymo reports that more than 75 percent of Internet users worldwide do not even have a credit card. By contrast, Paymo says, approximately three billion consumers own a mobile phone.

With mobile payment services like Paymo, Zong, and Mobillcash, users do not need to have a credit card or purchase currency cards to acquire virtual goods. Instead, these mobile payment services allow users to simply enter their phone number on their website and reply to a text message sent to them. Assuming they respond to the text, the charge is then placed on their monthly phone bill.

Though this payment method is easy, such convenience comes at a price for users. In addition to the price they pay for the virtual currency, users must cough up an additional 10 percent service fee that Paymo charges them. Paymo justifies the charge by noting that cell phone carries have their own transaction fees, ranging anywhere from 20-40 percent. Assuming that these statistics of credit card versus mobile phone consumers is accurate, even a small portion of that three billion would render this partnership worthwhile for both companies.

Raptr, a social game discovery platform, has launched a new partners program in order to help companies reach their target consumers and engage with them more deeply.

According to Raptr, a number of major game developers have already jumped on board, including Sony Online Entertainment, NHN USA, Gala-Net, and GamesCampus. They have not limited themselves strictly to games, either. Raptr also partnered with hardware companies such as Razer, a provider of gaming peripherals, and Bigfoot Networks, which makes the Killer NIC gaming network cards.

Seeing as Raptr operates chiefly as a discovery platform, developers that join the program would most likely enjoy good exposure for their titles. They can also integrate with Raptr’s APIs. These APIs enable the platform to easily display the actions occurring in the games supported by the company, displaying achievements, rankings, and even what items players receive.

The partners program will allow developers to distribute a co-branded Raptr client that will come bundled with the game, demos, and even future patches. Using Raptr, developers can integrate their games with other platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

In the past, far too many good games have struggled (or failed) because they didn’t catch the user-base they deserved.  Raptr, with its strong distribution capabilities, now provides a free way for game developers to avoid such a fate with their products.

As a user of the MoiPal virtual world,  you have an avatar called your “Pal.” He or she will do things even when you’re not around. In MoiPal, you do not travel around the virtual world. Instead, your avatar acts as an agent, responding to your commands.

MoiPal says it is hoping to grow from 100,000 to 1 million users in 2009. To facilitate this growth, the company will focus on the younger demographic. From a monetization standpoint, it hopes to sell virtual goods sponsored by musical acts, all of which will be payable from a mobile device. As MoiPal sees it, young people tend to be among the most active mobile users. They also follow the latest music more aggressively than older consumers.

MoiPal is currently running a campaign to recruit these users to its virtual worlds by embedding widgets on participating bands’ MySpace pages that, when clicked on, allow potential users to create a new avatar. As an incentive, anyone that registers for MoiPal using one of these widgets receives band-themed virtual goods for their avatar to wear. In addition, MoiPal runs contests and gives away sponsored goods as rewards to encourage user engagement.

Moipal is “thinking about doing revenue share kind of deals with the bands,” says Joakim Achren, founder and CEO of MoiPal’s parent company, Ironstar Helsinki. “For now, it’s interesting to get the bands and the artists, to get this new kind of engagement with the audience through the virtual merchandise. It’s like the band suddenly has its own game. It’s something most of the bands and record labels have had an idea for, to give the band its own game, and we come up with the solution for them.”

MoiPal has also focused on mobile payments as its main technology to manage transactions. It receives premium SMS text payments from European users. For United States users, though mobile payments are available via Zong, most Americans still pay using credit cards or PayPal, which MoiPal supports.

The company hopes to see the number of mobile payments increase, however, since it has tied a lot of its user growth, especially in Europe, to that payment method. Based on a post by Virtual Goods News, “nearly all of MoiPal’s Eastern European users are serviced by a single mobile payment service called Fortumo.”

But mobile payments systems don’t work well everywhere. In Southeast Asia, for instance, MoiPal can’t find a dominant mobile payment provider like the ones found in Europe and the U.S.

“There’s no service there where you can just create an account on the web and pick out what price point you want,” Achren says. “You really have to talk to the people, meet them, and give estimates of what you’ll make. Zong and Fortumo just give you the right to start doing stuff straight away, and you don’t have to give them forecasts of how much money you’re going to make. The mobile providers are very good for start-ups.”

[via Virtual Goods News]