Hard on the heels of Mxit’s announcement that it will be enabling third party applications, with mobile game developers expected to be the biggest beneficiaries, mobile community mig33 has introduced its own mig33 Game Developer Program, promising social game developers easy access to its claimed 40 million registered users.
Mobile social network mig33 is about to expand its social game offerings radically. Social game developers worldwide now have access to a claimed 40 million registered mig33 users who access the mobile social entertainment service via its J2ME downloadable client, WAP site and web.
Research by World Wide Worx, however, has shown that the number of active users of such services is as low as a third of the registered user base, with massive churn in mobile accounts leading to multiple registrations, and loss of interest resulting in high proportions of dormant accounts. This affects mig33 as much as it affects South Africa’s leading mobile social network Mxit.
As with the new initiative announced by Mxit the week before, mig33’s new program offers developers full API integration support, promotion opportunities, virtual goods options, and revenue share.
mig33 also announced the new program’s initial partners, which include one of the key partners in MXit’s new API roll-out, Blue Leaf Games, the outfit behind the online game Moonbase.
The full list of initial partners is:
Blue Leaf Games
Blue Leaf Games is an independent South Africa-based gamehouse developing multi-player games for mobile platforms, and developer of Moonbase, a massive multi-player online strategy game in which players seek to rule the moon.
‚Blue Leaf Games is thrilled to partner with mig33 and bring Moonbase to 40 million potential new players,‚ said Adrian Frielinghaus, CEO of Blue Leaf Games.
TheMobileGamer (TMG)
TMG is a publisher of mobile social games for the fast-growing Southeast Asian market and developer of Club Wars, a game in which players manage their own clubs, seek fans, and challenge their friends.
‚mig33 has built one of Asia’s biggest and most vibrant virtual economies, and TheMobileGamer is proud to be one of its first gaming partners,‚ said Alvin Yap, CEO, TheMobileGamer.
Kooky Panda
Kool Panda is a Beijing-based developer of more than 300 socially connected Flash Lite games, and publisher of Kooky Pets, in which players create and care for their own pets and ‚pet homes,‚ and visit with other pets and pet owners.
‚As a developer of Flash Lite mobile games, Kooky Panda is all about phone flash fun with friends, which makes us perfectly suited to team with a service as vibrant and fast-growing as mig33,‚ said Cherry Wu, CEO and co-founder of Kooky Panda.
‚This new program opens the floodgates for social game developers who can build smart, engaging games, and who want access to a very large and loyal mobile-first community,‚ said Steven Goh, CEO and co-founder, mig33. ‚For developers, it’s a virtually turn-key opportunity to get a big audience very quickly and generate significant revenue in fast-growing markets.
Steven Goh, CEO and co-founder of mig33
The new game developer program continues mig33’s push of new mobile social entertainment features. In 2010 alone, mig33 has launched over a thousand virtual goods, avatar items and games. Its members purchase more than four million virtual gifts per month, and exchange nearly one billion mig33 messages every day.