As we’ve been writing lately, the growing swell in connected TV variants means great new opportunities for content distribution services – but also for their partners.
In one example, TV games distributor PlayJam, which has been placing its own selection of games on to boxes like BSkyB’s for the last 11 years and now numbers 500 games, is now opening up as a distribution platform for other developers’ games, too.
Sporting an API to its network and a software development kit in an upcoming New Year beta, it’s inviting third-party casual game developers to feed their games to TVs on its network, including those with Sony (NYSE: SNE) Internet TV, Samsung Internet@TV, Sky, Dish TV, Freeview and UPC.
PlayJam says developers’ games will be able to take advantage of its technology’s tournament, reward, leaderboard, chat, messaging, billing and user account features. If this gets popular, one might not bet against TV following mobile as the next mass casual gaming platform. With a caveat – most people play casual mobile games to fill blank time whilst mobile, but they sit at their TV to be entertained.
The IPTV opportunity is also getting stronger for the likes of interactive developer PushButton. Having built the Sony Internet TV, Samsung Internet@TV and Playstation 3 apps for Lovefilm, the movie rent service now says it’s effectively making the producer “an extension of the service’s internal development team”, contracting it to develop the service for future IPTV platforms, including in other countries.
Lovefilm’s Playstation app was apparently due for release Wednesday, but it wasn’t available during morning test. Just as new services including YouView could mean boom time in the living room for relatively small-scale businesses like Blinkbox, as its CEO Michael Comish wrote on paidContent:UK recently, Lovefilm also stands to benefit greatly.