日前，GameStop旗下的Flash休闲游戏平台Kongregate推出了该网站的应用版本，正式进军Android手机游戏领域。

据游戏邦了解，这个应用版本的名称是Kongregate Arcade，支持在Anroid Market上免费下载，提供约300款可运行于手机平台的Flash游戏，其中有一半左右可提供下载服务，用户可以离线体验这些游戏。

Kongregate Arcade

Kongregate网站支持基于Flash的独立开发游戏，同时也向开发商提供添加虚拟商品的技术支持，用户可以通过购买Kongregate网站的虚拟货币获取游戏道具。另外，Kongregate还支持用户给游戏打分，在游戏中与他人聊天和沟通。

游戏邦还获知，等到该网站的技术问题得到解决后，Kongregate还将逐步引进更多的游戏，让玩家直接下载体验。Kongregate董事长及联合创始人吉姆·格里尔（Jim Greer）表示，该应用版本仅限运行于手机平台，开发商如果要向Kongregate Arcade投放游戏，就得对产品进行适当调整和改进，才能让游戏在手机平台上顺利运行。

该应用的功能与Android Marketplaces十分接近，用户可浏览Kongregate主网上的游戏，并将其下载到手机上。不过，这款应用支持的是Flash技术，所以Android 2.2以下版本的手机用户就无法使用这项服务了。这款应用中的游戏采用的是全屏模式，但用户可以点击返回退出游戏。虽然Kongregate原来已经有一个专门面向Android用户开放的手机游戏网站，但这个应用版本比手机网站更有实用。用户可以通过该手机网站下载游戏，然后在Kongregate Arcade平台中运行。这个应用版本还增加了用户评论、评分等原网站所提供的功能。

格里尔还表示，Kongregate目前正寻找与WP7或WebOS等其他手机平台合作的机会，因为这些手机用户比较支持移动浏览器。不过iPhone用户就没有那么幸运了，因为苹果一向反对其他内容集成平台在iOS操作系统上运行，“Apple已经明确表示他们是游戏分销渠道，所以自然会排斥其他内容集成及分销平台。”

虽然苹果一直领跑手机游戏行业，吸引了Epic Games等大牌游戏开发商，Kongregate Arcade虽然不敌苹果，却也能为Android用户提供许多其他相对热门的游戏，而且这些游戏多数都没法在iPhone平台上运行（游戏邦注：众所周知，苹果一直很抵制Flash）。

Kongregate Arcade还与谷歌广告平台AdMob进行了合作，它在应用界面的下端增加了一小条横幅广告。现在该应用展示的均为自家广告，但未来也会增加谷歌搜索广告等其他广告类型。

目前约有8500名开发商针对Kongregate平台开发包括《You Have To Burn The Rope》、《Achievement Unlocked》和《Dolphin OlympicsFlash》等Flash游戏。该平台的竞争对手包括拥有1300万用户的Newgrounds网站（游戏邦注：该网站的起步比Kongregate早十年，除了游戏还提供视频内容）。另外，以OpenFeint为代表的手机社交游戏平台也是Kongregate的潜在竞争对手。

在投放到Android Marketplace之前，该应用的访问量大约3万次，它的开发周期约为9个月；除了在谷歌应用商店，用户还可以通过独立应用商店GetJar下载这款应用。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Kongregate, the GameStop-owned casual flash game site, has gone mobile with an application for devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system. This is either some very good news or very bad news, depending on your penchant for addictive flash games.

Hundreds of those addicting flash games are coming to phones running on Google’s mobile operating system, Android, with the release of Kongregate’s mobile Arcade. The application — free on the Android marketplace — lets Kongregate users access around 300 of the site’s flash games optimized for mobile phones and download about half of them and play them offline.

Kongregate runs a site for independently developed games running on Adobe’s flash software. The company hands developers the keys when it comes to adding virtual goods and lets gamers purchase virtual goods and tip developers with Kongregate Kreds (the site’s currency). Kongregate adds achievements to some of the more popular games depending on how much demand there is from the user base. The site adds a rail to the side of each game that lets users rate games and chat with other people who are playing the game.

As time goes on, Kongregate will introduce more games and let users download more of them directly once some minor technical issues with the service are resolved. The mobile site — and by extension, Kongregate Arcade — only runs versions that are optimized for mobile devices. That usually means remapping controls to work with just a touch screen, but developers are typically pretty willing to modify their games and make them playable on mobile devices, said Kongregate chief executive and co-founder Jim Greer.

The app behaves pretty similarly to other marketplaces. Users can browse games that are on Kongregate’s main site and download them to the phone. The app runs in flash — which means it won’t run on any old Android phones that haven’t yet updated to version 2.2 (Froyo) of the Android operating system. The application then jumps into a full-screen mode for the game, and users can just hit back to jump out of the game. Kongregate already has a mobile website that lets Android users access flash games. The application is a bit slicker than the site, naturally, and each game accessed on the mobile site also automatically brings up the option to download it and run it in the Kongregate Arcade. The application also brings some of the features from the main site’s rail to the mobile application — such as comments and being able to rate each game.

The site is exploring working with some of the other mobile operating systems like Windows Phone 7 and WebOS, Greer said. For now, those users are going to have to rely on the mobile website.

iPhone users are probably going to be out of luck, because Apple is usually against having other large aggregators of content on its mobile operating system, Greer said.

“Apple has made it pretty clear they are the distributor of games,” he said. “They are kind of hostile to other people aggregating content and distributing it.”

But Apple has largely been the leader of the mobile app race and has blossomed into a good avenue for mobile games. Powerhouse developers like Gears of War creator Epic Games have released games for the iPhone. Kongregate’s Arcade gives Android users a large pool of relatively popular games — and the prospect of a steady stream of new games — that many iPhone users simply won’t have a chance to play on mobile devices running the iPhone operating system because of Apple’s stance on flash.

The Kongregate Arcade works with Google’s AdMob advertisements — like Pandora, it adds a small bar at the bottom with an advertisement. Right now it’s populated with in-house ads, but as the application is deployed the advertising will ramp up and include Google search ads and other ads sold in-house.

Kongregate has around 8,500 developers working on flash games like You Have To Burn The Rope, Achievement Unlocked and Dolphin Olympics (pictured ab0ve.) It rivals other online flash portals like Newgrounds (which has about a ten-year head start, but includes videos as well as games) with around 13 million users. It’s also competing with other mobile gaming services like those run by OpenFeint.

There were around 30,000 sessions of the mobile application run before it was taken off the Android Marketplace. The Kongregate staff worked on the application for 9 months and was in communication with Google during the whole development process, Greer said. You can still pick up the app here or on GetJar, but don’t say we didn’t warn you when you lose a half hour trying to balance blocks on top of each other.（source:venturebeat）