Activision is jumping into the mobile-social gaming fray with a new platform called Activate.
If you play games on your mobile device then the odds are pretty good that you’ve at least heard of Mobage and OpenFeint. As dismissive of mobile gaming as we “core” gamers can sometimes be, it’s a very lucrative field, and where the lucre is, Activision is never far behind.
So it is that the company has unveiled Activate, a new mobile-social platform that will allow gamers to log into Activision’s mobile games with either their Facebook account or a separate, Activate-specific account. Activate will be used to add social features to its Skylanders mobile games, beginning with Skylanders Cloud Patrol, which came out in March, and then with two new releases, Battlegrounds and Lost Islands, both of which come out sometime next month.
Activate will offer cloud storage, allowing users to access their saved games on any iOS device at any time, as well as conventional social features like friend lists, leaderboards and achievements. “Showdowns” will present players with challenges like “shoot the most sheep in ten minutes” and award them in-game currency for ranking well, with bonuses for beating their friends, and will also allow players to issue challenges to others.
No launch date for Activate has been set, but Activision said it will be rolled out to previously released games and all new ones released in the future.
Source: Inside Mobile Apps
