日前，跨设备游戏平台PlayJam宣布与STMicroelectronics携手合作，将PlayJam的游戏植入ST的网络电视和机顶盒系统中。

PlayJam-Logo

据游戏邦了解，PlayJam成立于1999年，擅长发行互动电视内容及游戏产品。该公司原先是法国Canal Sa和英国BSkyB公司的互动内容发行渠道，后来又逐渐向包括非洲在内的世界其他地区扩张。PlayJam旗下的产品已经进入千家万户的数字电视，在过去五年中创造了60亿次以上的下载量。该公司的其他数据还包括：

· 55%的付费转化率

· 每年80美元的ARPU（平均每用户消费金额）

·每名独立用户每月消费4.8次

·服务满意度高达99.3%

PlayJam同时提供免费和付费游戏，主要目标用户是25岁至45岁的成人群体。在2010年1月，PlayJam还与索尼、三星、苹果等多家硬件制造商合作，意在将自己产品推向4.5亿部设备。为实现这一远大目标，PlayJam已开始创建一系列可运行于高清电视的小工具。PlayJam公司董事长及创始人杰士伯·史密斯（Jasper Smith）曾在去年1月表示，他们相信休闲游戏有望成为这些上网设备的主要营收来源，PlayJam希望通过业务转型成为电视游戏发行商的领军力量。

游戏邦还获知，PlayJam将通过与STMicroelectronics的合作，把更多休闲游戏引进3D设备平台。PlayJam在推广自家产品的同时，还将帮助世界各地的游戏开发商的发行作品。PlayJam的核心技术是Phoenix，支持开发商在游戏中添加竞赛、奖励机制、积分排行榜、聊天信息功能等服务，此外还能提供跨平台移植和计费系统等服务。

除了这个合作案例，手机游戏开发商Glu Mobile不久前也宣布与Nvidia联手，针对三星的Android平板电脑开发游戏产品。这种迹象似乎表明，开发商与硬件制造商的紧密合作，已经成为下一代游戏开发的发展趋势。但作为一个游戏发行商和联网游戏服务供应商，PlayJam并不十分重视硬件本身的特点。

值得一提的是，如果谷歌和Facebook彼此有意，它们也可以让运行Android的设备与Facebook社交功能绑定（或者让苹果iOS平台与Facebook连接），假如此事成真，PlayJam又该如何应对？要知道掌握全局的并不总是硬件制造商，却极有可能是运营商甚至是苹果、谷歌等平台操作系统的持有者。

网络电视游戏的情况比较复杂，所以这一领域的竞争还不是那么激烈，但如果各个平台之间的技术标准逐渐统一后，想从中脱颖而出的公司就真得多动动脑，想想其他的出路了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

PlayJam and STMicroelectronics Team Up to Bring Games To TVs

PlayJam, one of the largest connected gaming platforms with a special focus on SmartTVs recently announced a partnership with STMicroelectronics in which Playjam’s game channel would be integrated with ST’s connected TVs and set-top box devices. More after the jump.

PlayJam was founded in 1999 and has since been quite active in the interactive TV content and games space for the last 12 years. PlayJam first became an interactive broadcast channel through Canal Sat in France and BSkyB in the UK and eventually spread to the international realm including Africa. Available in millions of homes with digital TV’s, PlayJam has generated over 6 billion downloads during the last 5 years with an average time spent of 13 minutes. Some other stats include:

55% conversion from free to pay

$80 Annualized ARPU

4.8 repeat unique purchases per month

99.3% overall satisfaction rate

The company primarily provides free and pay-to-play skill based games for audiences aged 25 to 45. Back in January of 2010, PlayJam secured partnerships with Sony, Samsung, Apple and others in order to meet eerie goal of spanning 450 million devices. PlayJam began the development of a series of TV widgets that were to be available on Sony BRAVIA Internet Widget enabled HDTVs as well as Dish India’s subscribers.

Jasper Smith, Chairman and Founder of PlayJam said in January 2010, “We’re delighted to have partnered with some of the largest CE and media organizations in the world to create a vast distribution network for our games. We believe casual games will be a key revenue driver for connected devices, shifting the focus of our business to become the leading TV games publisher.”

Now PlayJam is partnering with STMicroelectronics to bring a wide range of casual games to 3D accelerated devices. PlayJam will be both promoting its own titles as well as working with games developers world wide. According to PlayJam’s site, their core technology is called Phoenix. Phoenix provides games developers with the ability to select a number of value-added plug-ins such as tournaments, rewards schemes, leader boards, chat and messaging around their games, (without the need to rework them), to drive frequency and loyalty. Interoperability between platforms is made possible by Phoenix which also facilitates billing, centralized accounts and real- time reporting.

Comments Director, TV Strategic Marketing Yannick Paillard stated, “ST aims to maximize the value of its TV SoC for its customers and the end user.  Playjam connected game services, leveraging the 3D graphic processor of Freeman Ultra,  will deliver a great gaming experience. We look forward to working with them to roll out their service to our worldwide customers.”

While this is going on, we have others like Glu Mobile working closely with Nvidia to create games for Samsung’s Android-enabled Tablets powered by Nvidia’s Tegra. It seems like the next generation of games will demand cooperation between developer and device makers to fully leverage the hardware capabilities of a device. However PlayJam isn’t too concerned with maximizing the use of hardware as it is in being a publisher and connected games service.

But this is where lies the problem – if Google and Facebook so wanted, they could essentially link Android based devices (or Apple and Facebook for that matter for iDevices) to Facebook’s social graph and then what would happen to the likes of PlayJam? In the end the device makers won’t be the ones running things – it will be the carriers and maybe platforms unless net neutrality becomes a big issue.

The world of connected TV’s is so complicated that for now most players in the space are safe – but as fragmentation is reduced we should see the players with the best strategy rise to the top.（source:socialtimes）