OpenFeint: Cross-Platform Multiplayer Gaming

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Published on Saturday, 21 August 2010 12:12

As the battle for smartphone dominance continues between the iPhone's iOS and Android with sales and activations, users will soon be able to take the battle into the gaming arena thanks to OpenFeint's newest update to their SDK. Any game developer can add the OpenFeint SDK to their game to allow iPhone and Android users to compete against each other.

That's not all though. OpenFeint has also added an invite feature which allows gamers to send game invites to other gamers via email or SMS if they are in their smartphone's address book.

Cross-platform multiplayer gaming hit the big news when SGN (Social Gaming Network) released their cross-platform live multiplayer game Skies of Glory which you heard about here first (yes that is a blatant self-plug). Skies of Glory pits players against eachother, across both Android and iPhone devices, in real-time multiplayer aerial dogfights in 3D.

Right now cross-platform mobile gaming is still in it's infancy but growing rather quickly as the demand for true multiplayer games continues to grow:

“One glaring problem with today’s mobile gaming community is how fractured it is across platforms. OpenFeint is bridging the gap between gamers...we’re going to roll out services that will help friends that use different device platforms play against each other.” - Aurora Feint executive chairman Peter Relan.

You can blame part of this fractured cross-platform multiplayer issue on Apple's soon to be released Game Center which will not allow devices outside of iOS to connect to it via 3rd party SDKs. Hopefully we starts seeing more and more games coming out with the option of cross-platform multiplayer. OpenFeint's SDK is available to developers for free.

Website Referenced: FingerGaming via PocketGamer

Developer Website: OpenFeint

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