SnoopMafia Wars: Las Vegas hits 10 Million – Two weeks after the Mafia Wars: Las Vegas expansion launched, Zynga has reported that 10 million players have now visited the new virtaul city. As promised, the company promptly blew up a four ton armored truck to celebrate, out in the Las Vegas desert and with the help of none other than Snoop Dog. The video was streamed live, and can still be viewed at the Mafia Wars website.

Namco Bandai Joins Social Gaming – Based in information from Spong.com, the games developer Namco Bandai has confirmed that it will be moving into the social gaming market with two announced Facebook titles currently in development: City of Football and Treasure Abyss.

PantenePantene and H&M Join MyTown – A few weeks ago, Booyah introduced its product check-in feature to the mobile app, MyTown, and has registered over 350,000 product check-ins. This week, Pantene and H&M have joined in, allowing there products to be part of the possible scanning.

In addition to this, Booyah also announced that MyTown has checked-in more than 3.1 million registered users across the United States with more thatn 15 million check-ins, from players, each week, with a greater density of them occurring along the eastern coast. An image of check-in locations can be found here.

Space Empires to Come to iPhone & iPad – Earlier this week, the folks over at Nvinium Games announced that their recent release of Space Empires: Battle For Supremacy will be coming to the Apple iPhone and iPad devices. Any specific timelines have not been stated.

Brave ArmsBrave Arms Offers New Updates – The Facebook first-person shooter, Brave Arms, got some updates this week. Now players will be able to more easily invite their friends to games with new, personal invites. Additionally, the quirky shooter also got some in-game upgrades in the form of “zany” melee options such banana peels, axes, and plungers.

Kaixin001 Experiments with Open Platform – The Chinese social network Kaixin001 is looking to stand up against big time competitors such as RenRen and 51.c0m by opening its platform to select third party, social game developers, says China Social Games. This is a move set forth to help compensate for Kaixin001′s slow development time.

RoundsIsraeli Startup Launches Video Chat on Facebook - Israeli startup Rounds is launching a video chat platform for Facebook. With it, users will be able chat in real time while going about their normal Facebook activities.

[image via VentureBeat]

Chrome Store to Take Small Cuts – 1Up.com displayed the presentation from Google at GDC Europe this week. Interestingly enough, the Chrome Web Store will not only allow for users to purchase web applications for the Chrome browser, but will also support trials, subscriptions, and in-app payments and appears to include some social features. Furthermore, according to the presentation, Google will only take a 5% “processing fee” with no additional revenue share. The store is slated for an October launch.

MOL Global Plans Social Game Focus – Though the Malaysian payments company has been working more with virtual currency such as Facebook Credits, the social networking site is taking even more steps into social gaming. According to paidContent.org, the network told the Philippine Star that it was planning to shift itself to more of a “social gaming portal.”

AyeahAyeah Games Gets Seed Funding – Founded earlier this year by Doug Levin, a new social gaming company called Ayeah Games announced, this week, that it has closed a round of seed funding. Though the amount is not disclosed, it will be used to develop “social reality games.”

Zynga Gets Charged with Vandalism – Zynga may have gone a bit overboard with the Mafia Wars: Las Vegas marketing. Reports from SFWeekly have stated that the company is now in trouble with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office where Deputy City Attorney, Alex Tse accuses them of several “documented acts of sidewalk vandalism.” The accusation refers to several fake bank notes that had been glued to the city’s streets.

Source: Inside Social Games

date Saturday, August 21, 2010

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