Playyoo News

It’s that time of year again … Christmas is close, and co-incidentally, Playyoo is just a little over 1 year old. We launched our public beta on 12th December 2008. One year later we’ve reached over 36,000 members, and over 500 user generated games, and we’re building solid foundations for the future.

But back to Christmas. Playyoo relies 100% on the community for games, so it is appropriate here to highlight the latest offering from one of our most prolific members, Emilia Ciardi (aka Ekleptica).

SnowTime challenges you to remember what a snowman looks like, and recreate it. Since I have the short term memory of a goldfish, I have little chance of hitting the top score. You can use the “forward game” feature in the game scorecard to send it to your friends - and it will not cost you anything.

So, good luck with beating my score, and from all of us at Playyoo, our best wishes for the holiday season and a great 2009.

A special version of Playyoo is now available for customers of Telecom Italia’s NEXT Open Innovation web portal.

NEXT Open Innovation aggregates a series of new, innovative and convergent services, as well as community features such as news feeds, a user forum, blogs and wikis.

Italian mobile network customers (the service is not restricted to Telecom Italia clients) can create a profile which gives them access to all NEXT Open Innovation content, including Playyoo. Members who joined Playyoo through NEXT benefit from a seamless single sign on, and a user profile shared with other NEXT services. They are automatically included with the NEXT group in Playyoo, and see a co-branded web site.

We’re already seeing a steady stream of new members joining us through the NEXT portal … welcome to Playyoo with NEXT!

Da oggi Playyoo è accessibile anche dal portale 3 X-Series Mobile Internet. Raggiungerci è facile! Infatti ogni cliente 3 potrà navigare il sito mobile Playyoo per scaricare giochi, iscriversi e registrare il proprio punteggio in modo completamente gratuito, direttamente dal proprio videofonino! Basta cliccare sul banner presente in fondo alla pagina 3 X-Series Mobile Internet per accedere al mondo di Playyoo!

Prova subito tutti i servizi offerti da 3 X-Series e divertiti gratis con Playyoo!

(PER LA VERSIONE ITALIANO, CLICCA QUI)

We’re pleased to announce that Playyoo is now available through 3 Italia’s X-Series mobile internet portal. Through the X-Series service, customers of the 3 network can browse Playyoo’s mobile site and download games with no extra data charges. This is a great way to enjoy Playyoo, along with the other services provided by X-Series.

The Playyoo logo on X-Series is difficult to miss - 3 customers can just click on it to be taken directly to their personal home page.

We’re very pleased today to be launching our first advergame on Playyoo, in partnership with and on behalf of Biscaldi S.r.l, the Italian importer for the leading Japanese beer brand, Asahi.

An advergame functions pretty much like any other game on Playyoo. It is owned by a member, in this case “Asahi Super Dry”, representing Biscaldi’s marketing team. It has dedicated leaderboards, and appears in the game stream in the same way as any other game in Playyoo.

The difference is that the game and member pages on the web site are custom-branded, the game’s pre & post-roll sections carry brand-specific messages, and the game itself features some branding.

The game, “Sushi and Asahi Please!” was developed on behalf of Biscaldi by Playyoo in collaboration with Zen Graffiti Studios. They did a fantastic job in creating a fairly complex game whilst keeping within the quite tight restrictions of the Flash Lite 1.1 player.

This illustrates one of the ways in which Playyoo helps to create a market for Flash Lite developers to monetize their skills. The team at Zen Graffiti Studios have been enthusiastic participants in Playyoo since the beginning, and have been engaged in the Playyoo Developer Program. We’re very pleased that our efforts to build an ecosystem in which Flash Lite developers, Flash Lite media buyers, and of course Playyoo itself, all benefit, is beginning to come to fruition.

If you’re a Playyoo member, you should find “Sushi and Asahi Please!” in your game stream. You can also check it out now in the web Flash Lite emulator.

Finally, you can get the game delivered to your phone by texting “Asahi” to the number 00393399945642. Please note that standard operator tariffs on SMS and data apply, and be aware that these can be quite high if you are outside Italy.