Battlenet on Facebook
We’ve been touting it for ages, but it’s finally happening – the integration of major gaming companies and future games with the power of social networking website facebook.
As mafiawars and farmville have reaped massive amounts of gamers from facebook, other gaming companies weren’t going to stand back and let them take the whole pool of potential online gamers.
Recently, the Kingory Game went all facebook and integrated with the gaming app side of things and has seen an increase in users – the MMORPG title which closely mimics Evony Free Forever felt it could get an upper hand on rival games by joining forces with Facebook.
But now, Battle.net (Battlenet by Blizzard Inc) the makers of Starcraft, Starcraft2, World of Warcraft and Warcraft3 (DOTA – Defence of the ancients) have aligned with facebook with the doors opening to battlenet users first and branching into the starcraft realms initially.
The next step would surely be world of warcraft? If Blizzard could somehow bring WoW to the Facebook side of things, they could replicate the success of evony, and do it even more successfully with additional users. Naturally, grabbing users on facebook is much easier and faster than drawing in new visits, account logins and clicks from the web.
Facebook friends will invite, challenge and link with other gamers on all levels – and Blizzard saw this.
The other party which would be interested by all this would be Google. The big ‘Google’ has been watching facebook for some time, noticing the rapid raise of FB not just amongst social networkers, but advertisers, with facebook adverts cheap and growing rapidly – not to mention being super-targeted.
Google don’t want Facebook to continue to be the ‘Home Garden’ for users, with many users entering and leaving their internet time with Facebook.
The future is changing, and changing rapidly – Gamers unite, because they are the next to be rewarded with this latest facebook and battlenet, Blizzard partnership.
