MySpace jumps into social casual games arena

After becoming the prominent tool in the promotion of music and video, MySpace.com, the world’s leading social networking site, now heads to another area of entertainment. The popular online teen hangout MySpace announced Tuesday that it will roll out a casual games channel in the New Year.

News Corp.-owned MySpace said that they are teaming up with casual-game maker Oberon Games to create the channel of social games, dubbed “MySpace Games.” The white label casual games company Oberon, which is part of Oberon Media, will provide content for the channel.

MySpace Games, scheduled to launch in January, will be an ad-supported property with inventory in and around hundreds of online casual games. MySpace users will be able to embed games on their profile pages, and challenge other MySpace members to play against each other or together in multi-player modes.

“Bringing entertainment in the form of fun, social, casual games will enhance our user experience,” said Amit Kapur, VP of Business Development for MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. “Our goal is to provide our members with an easy way to play with their friends and give them with additional ways to interact.”

The most widely-known lifestyle portal MySpace which currently has about 180 million user profiles, and is adding 320,000 profiles per day allows users to create online profiles with photos, music, and personal information, including hometowns and education. Company's policy prevents children under 14 from setting up profiles, but it relies on users to specify their ages. The site attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the United States.

“We’re very excited to be partnering with MySpace to provide the best social networking casual games experience to its growing audience. Our white label casual gaming solution is allowing us to create a customized games platform that delivers a great experience to MySpace users,” said Tal Kerret, Co-Founder and Chairman of New York-based Oberon Media.

In order to give gamers the greatest online entertainment experience, Oberon, at the time of channel launch, will provide a developer toolkit, designed specifically for multi-player and social gaming, through which developers will be able to submit unique ideas for new games.

Oberon Media describes itself on its Website as the world’s leading multi-platform casual-games company that delivers global, integrated casual-games solutions across online, mobile and interactive TV platforms.

Separately, MySpace announced its first co-developed original Web series called 'Roommates' on its video sharing site MySpaceTV. The show will track the lives of four 20 years old women, who've graduated recently, and are living together in Los Angeles. Fans can interact with the characters online, and influence the plot.
This is not the first time MySpace moving into a new arena instead MySpace.com, a social-networking hub and one of the most popular sites on the Internet, in March released the Impact Channel, a political community on the social network designed to empower politicians, non-profits, and civic organizations to connect with the global users of MySpace.

Targeting the political world by adding pages for 2008 presidential candidates, the impact channel enables its valuable users to learn about the presidential candidates, who have posted their official MySpace profiles, experience the political process online and offline and learn more about issues and organizations.