Technology News

Nextpeer, the mobile gaming network that adds multi-player mode to indie titles, is entering private beta on the Android platform.

Although the platform launched about two years ago, it only started picking up momentum in the last few months, growing to 1,000 live games from 100 back in January. They’ve also 10X-ed the number of monthly active users in the network, reaching 8 million from 800,000 at the beginning of the year.

Those 8 million users have actually used Nextpeer’s tournaments; the actual reach of the games in the company’s network is much larger at somewhere between 20 to 30 million monthly actives.

Nextpeer adds multiplayer mode to mobile games. When gamers launch an app, they can tap an online tournaments or multi-player button inside the game, sign in directly or through Facebook, and then join a live table. You can see an example in the video above.

The idea is that multiplayer makes games much stickier and more engaging as players actually compete with each other in real-time. The platform offers both asynchronous multi-player and synchronous multi-player modes. So you can either play with people in real-time, or with different people even if they’re not playing at the same time as you.

They were originally going to use a virtual currency-based approached to monetization with players making bets that they would win tournaments.

But they’ve since moved more toward an advertising-centric model where games in the Nextpeer network will cross-promote other titles. This isn’t launched yet but it’s coming soon. The company’s CEO Shai Magzimof didn’t reveal what the revenue share will be with developers, but he said it would be in favor of them.

The company will also give developers the ability to customize the multi-player screen, so that it feels more native and natural to the game. Nextpeer has raised almost $2 million in funding from investors including OurCrowd and Wolfson Group, along with other private individuals.

Kim-Mai Cutler 27 May, 2013