As we learned in our interview yesterday, about one-third of MySpace users currently play games daily, and the goal is to drive that number up to 50%. The new MySpace Games Gallery experience gives users a better interface for discovering, sharing and rating new titles by providing personalized recommendations, popular game charts and notifications from friends' Streams.
A new iPhone application, dubbed Neon, lets users access their games on the go. The app provides real-time notifications that are shareable with friends, access to all games currently available on MySpace and a way to remotely install games right from the phone. A number of new social games are launching on the platform as well, including Fish Isle, Hoop Fever Live, Kingdoms of Camelot, Paradise Paintball, SPP Ranch, Warlords, Wild Ones and Zombie Revenge.
For game developers, MySpace is adding a number of new features to the platform, including a new API for analytics, a way to track how users are finding new games, access to improved performance tools for multiplayer games and integration with Unity, a powerful 3D gaming engine. The latter is part of an effort to encourage third-party developers to craft more sophisticated and visually rich game titles than the current crop of casual social titles currently in vogue on social networks (Farmville et al).