Playphone is a

social gaming network Jam City, Inc. (formerly MindJolt and Social Gaming Network) is an American video game developer based in Culver City, California. The company was founded in 2010 by Chris DeWolfe, Colin Digiaro, Aber Whitcomb, and Josh Yguado. Jam City has ni ...

founded in 2003 that allows users to interact with their friends over

mobile games A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...

History

Founded in April 2003 by Ron Czerny, Playphone is funded by

Menlo Ventures Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology ...

, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Coral Capital Management. Playphone provides direct-to-consumer mobile content distribution. Selling through 4,000 retail stores, including

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

EB Games EB Games (formerly known as Electronics Boutique and EB World) is an American computer and video games retailer. First established as an American company in 1977 by James Kim with a single electronics-focused location in the King of Prussia mall ...

Fred Meyers Fred Leland Meyers (born August 8, 1983) is an American retired actor and paramedic. He is best known for his recurring role as Tom Gribalski in the Disney Channel original series ''Even Stevens'' and the follow-up Disney Channel original mov ...

Rite Aid Rite Aid Corporation is an American drugstore chain based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1962 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by Alex Grass under the name Thrift D Discount Center. The company ranked No. 148 in the Fortune 500 lis ...

, and

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

, consumers purchase pre-paid phone cards offering two mobile games, two

polyphonic ringtone A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...

s, and two wallpaper options. Early partners included Digital Bridges, offering access to game titles including Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

's ''

The Lion King ''The Lion King'' is a 1994 American animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 32nd Disney animated feature film and the fifth produced during the Disney Renaissance, it ...

''. Expanding its offer portfolio, Playphone went on to build a subscription-based service to provide games, ringtones, and wallpaper for mobile phones, with a library of more than 150 games and thousands of ringtones. In September 2006, Playphone raised an additional $9.1 million dollars in Series B funding from

and Cardinal Venture Capital. In 2007, Playphone was acknowledged as one of the top 10 most visited mobile phone entertainment sites. In May 2007, Playphone secured its Series C funding of $18.75 million dollars from Scale Venture Capital, which was used to facilitate Playphone’s expansion into Latin America. In May 2008, Playphone acquired Pitch Entertainment Group, a

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-based mobile content distributor founded by

David Warburton David John Warburton (born 28 October 1965) is a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Somerton and Frome. On his election in the 2015 general election he represented the Conservative Party, but was suspended from the p ...

. The acquisition of Pitch enabled Playphone to continue its global expansion and granted them access to additional users in 20 countries across Africa, Asia and Europe. In June 2008, Playphone partnered with UK based Top Up TV to showcase its mobile content in a new Playphone branded TV channel. Also in June 2008, Playphone partnered with Cellufun to provide Playphone’s mobile content to their 5.5+ million users and signed new distribution agreements with

Virgin Mobile USA Virgin Mobile USA was a no-contract Mobile Virtual Network Operator. It used Sprint's network for coverage. It licensed the Virgin Mobile brand from United Kingdom-based Virgin Group. Virgin Mobile USA was headquartered in Kansas City, Missou ...

and

Cincinnati Bell Cincinnati Bell, doing business as Altafiber (typeset as altafiber), is a regional telecommunications service provider based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It provides landline telephone, fiber-optic Internet, and IPTV services through its ...

. Playphone continued its growth in 2009 and in October, Playphone partnered with Vantrix to deploy its Vantrix Storefront Optimizer to support Playphone’s continued expansion into the Asian mobile market. In October 2010, Playphone announced its new mobile social gaming platform for smartphones and tablets called Playphone Social. Playphone Social was a strategic shift for Playphone’s mobile entertainment content offerings and helped Playphone make the leap from feature phones to

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. Playphone’s new platform would focus on its revolutionary mobile social gaming technology and feature multiplayer cross-platform mobile social gaming. In December 2010, Playphone launched Playphone

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

; its first smartphone game in support of its mobile gaming network. Playphone Poker is a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

-style

Texas Hold’em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face ...

game that achieved a top 5 casino apps ranking and over 2 million downloads in the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

for the first 4 months after its launch. In February 2011, Playphone launched the beta for the Playphone Social Gaming Network. In June 2011, Playphone released the Android OS version of its popular Playphone Poker game. In August 2011, Playphone announced a global strategic agreement with

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

-based mobile games company Perfect World, to enable a number of games to be distributed on the Playphone Social Network. In December 2011, the Playphone Social Gaming Network launched commercially. Playphone’s new gaming network featured a social, cross-platform mobile gaming experience enabling iOS, Android and WP7 mobile gamers to play together. Playphone acquired the mobile social marketing firm SocialHour in March 2012. SocialHour was acquired to augment Playphone’s mobile marketing and distribution expertise in support of the development and growth of the Playphone Social Gaming Network.

Playphone Social Gaming Network

Launched in December 2011, Playphone Social Gaming Network (PSGN) is an advanced cross-platform,

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

network that connects

and

tablet Tablet may refer to: Medicine * Tablet (pharmacy), a mixture of pharmacological substances pressed into a small cake or bar, colloquially called a "pill" Computing * Tablet computer, a mobile computer that is primarily operated by touching the s ...

gamers to a worldwide social gaming experience. Playphone’s cross-platform technology works on the world’s leading platforms including

, Android,

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

, WP,

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It received multiple large upda ...

and supports

Adobe AIR Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and is codenamed Apollo) is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applicatio ...

. Due to this, Playphone is able to connect gamers with the most popular games that give them the ability to play with their friends at any time regardless of their

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. One major feature is the ''InstaMultiplay'' function which can be easily integrated by developers. ''InstaMultiplay'' features include: *''Play Now'': automatically connects players with live opponents or computer-managed robots *''Play with Friends'': allows players to instantly challenge online friends and invite friends to play via

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

*''Go to Lobby'': lobby environment where players can challenge or be challenged to a game regardless if players are connected or not By June 2012, Playphone’s Social Gaming Network had 4.1 million

monthly active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

, 12 million game sessions, 3.5 million play hours, and over 3,000 developers. One of the most successful titles to date, Assaulter Special Operations, broke into the top 20 on the Google Play store on Android devices. Playphone’s first carrier app store – Games Portal on Verizon - launched in 2013. Preloaded on multiple Android devices. Users can see what games their friends are playing, download and play their friends’ favorite games with them, and invite other friends to play, all from the same app.

Developer access

PSGN was designed as a developer-friendly platform, giving developers full control over the publishing and distribution of their game, IP, customer experience, and

virtual economies A virtual economy (or sometimes synthetic economy) is an emergence, emergent economics, economy existing in a virtual world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an online game, particularly in massively multiplayer online games (M ...

. The SDK provides a suite of social and engagement tools to optimize monetization, engagement, distribution and user experience while providing direct access to one-click carrier billing, soon-to-launch carrier app stores and hundreds of millions of carrier subscribers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Playphone Companies established in 2003 Companies based in San Jose, California Mobile phone companies of the United States Video game companies based in California Mobile software Cross-platform mobile software Mobile game companies