Inside Social Games

You’d have to be living under a rock the past few years not to know the overall success of Microsoft’s Xbox Live. While it still strives to become more connected with the social/casual universe, it has been a tremendous hit with the core gaming audience when it comes to online play, achievements, and leaderboards. It is this success that ngmoco founder and CEO, Neil Young, hopes to bring to the iPhone.

ngmoco’s new platform is called Plus+. It is strikingly similar to its Microsoft counterpart. It allows for easy sign-in, leaderboards, friends list, and direct challenges (which make use of the new push notification feature that comes with Apples 3.0 OS).

Young believes ngmoco’s service is far more social than predecessor online platforms. “Xbox Live or PlayStation Network has sort of one dimension of functionality that is relevant to gamers,” he says in an interview with IGN. “The process of adding a friend to Xbox Live is painful compared to adding your friends to your social network.”

The platform launched a little under a month ago with Star Defense. Anyone who has used it will understand what Young means. In traditional consoles, one always has to incorporate new usernames, handles, or codes — which is part of the reason many casuals don’t bother with them. But with the Plus+ platform, once you’ve registered, the new gaming network uses the exact same information to identify users and their friends on the iPhone (by using their contact lists).

What is worrisome to many, however, is that mobile games (especially online mobile games) are very asynchronous in nature. To this end, similar services such as Microsoft’s Live Anywhere and Nokia’s N-Gage are both examples of failed attempts at the Plus+ concept.

Nevertheless, Young states that Ngmoco is committed to the idea. It will be building functionality into its future titles, including the recently released Rolando 2 and the upcoming first-person shooter dubbed “KillTest.” Past ngmoco titles will also be updated to include Plus+ functionality. With more than 9 million downloads to date, it could avoid the fate that befell Microsoft and Nokia’s efforts.

In the end, it will be the games that make or break this new endeavor. According to Young, ngmoco will have help. According to the same IGN post, the company has been “in active discussions with other game makers.”

With the power of 3.0, Plus+ certainly has a lot of potential. Young seems to have many plans for the future, too. Already, he has stated that he would like to incorporate in-app transactions. A Facebook and Twitter integration is in the works. There is the prospect of gamer feeds that would show the in-game activity of players. There is also the concept of redeemable points (essentially virtual currency), which would be used for purchasing things such as virtual goods or premium services.

With the incredible popularity and power behind the iPhone, Young’s vision for Plus+ could come to fruition. Young is undoubtedly well-aware of the challenges that lie ahead, and the failures that past companies have experienced.

[images via theAppleBlog]