NeoEdge Networks was a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

based technology and in-game advertising company that enabled casual game publishers and developers to deliver television-like commercials within their products frequently in the context of free-to-consumer casual game play. NeoEdge powered advertising for a variety of game publishers including Yahoo. NeoEdge provided both

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

game distribution (to reduce costs of distributing games) and in-game advertising (to help increase consumer game play and monetization). It was renamed Blue Noodle in early 2011 and shut down later that year.

Introduction

NeoEdge provided advertising inside online

casual games A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a Hardcore gamer, hardcore game, which is targeted at Gamer#Dedication spectrum, hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They genera ...

. The online video advertising platform provides advertisers a medium that reaches a key

demographic Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...

(adults over 18 years of age) with television-like commercials in an engaged environment that casual gamers have accepted in exchange for free game play.

History

NeoEdge was founded in 2002 by

Steven Woods Steven Gregory Woods (born June 16, 1965) is a Canadian entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding ''Quack.com'', the first popular Voice portal platform, in 1998. Woods became the head of engineering for Google Canada where he was until 2021 ...

, Jeromy Carriere, Kelly Slough, Dave Simons, and Michael Babiak, former

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

and

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

employees, under the name "Kinitos". While at

Quack.com Quack.com was an early voice portal company. The domain name later was used for Quack, an iPad search application from AOL. History It was founded in 1998 by Steven Woods, Jeromy Carriere and Alex Quilici as a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, base ...

the founders created the first consumer-based Voice Portal, acquired by America Online in 2000. In 2007,

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...

co-founder Nolan Bushnell joined the NeoEdge board as Chairman. Under the Kinitos brand, the company participated in

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Smart Client program intended to help companies deliver Web 2.0 Internet services. These services were intended to help companies deliver consumer services that transcended traditional browsers helping to provide downloadable application-style capabilities to consumer and enterprise companies without the past problems associated with installed applications. Downloadable games with embedded web services are one class of such solutions, the MostFun.com Game Player, owned by NeoEdge, is one example of such an application - others include all manner of browser extensions and plugins, or downloadable web services applications like

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

, Bittorrent,

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

, and many others. In 2005, Kinitos reorganized to support game developers and distributors to deliver ad-enabled game play to consumers as an alternative to traditional "try and buy" models. NeoEdge became a leader in changing the current business model of the casual game industry. According to the Casual Game Association, 200 Million people worldwide play casual games every month. The industry struggled as a “hits” based business with a “Try and Buy” business model made long-term revenue generation difficult. In 2010, the company was merged with Offspring Games and started a game studio in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. Titles released include Prize-O-Rama and Happy Thoughts. The game studio was unable to produce a profitable title and the company fell on hard financial times during the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

. It was shutdown in July 2011.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Neoedge Networks Defunct video game companies of the United States Companies based in Mountain View, California Marketing companies established in 2002 Advertising agencies of the United States 2002 establishments in California