Harvest Moon: Pocket Ranch
Livewire's title to be distributed via the PlayPhone Social cross-platform mobile network.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Jose, Calif., - October 4th, 2010 – PlayPhone ®, Inc ( www.PlayPhone.com), the market leader in delivering mobile entertainment content to individuals and social communities worldwide, and Liveware Inc. ( www.liveware.net), a leading Japanese mobile game development company, today announced a global partnership to distribute Harvest Moon ®: Pocket Ranch, on PlayPhone ® Social, PlayPhone’s new cross-platform mobile social network (SNS) destination. Harvest Moon® is a popular and long-running series that has appeared on a variety of different platforms.
Playphone ®, well known in the mobile industry for delivering brand name digital content to phones as well as for powering the mobile content portals for partners such as Walmart, Disney, NBC, National Geographic and more, has had extensive experience in delivering gaming products to mobile devices.
“We are excited to launch Harvest Moon ®: Pocket Ranch with Liveware as they are a dominant player in the social gaming world.” said Ron Czerny, CEO of PlayPhone ® Inc. “Playphone ® Social’s cross-platform allows players to invite friends from Facebook and Twitter to play along with them. In addition, the ability to socialize with friends on the gaming platform via multi-player functionality is a unique feature in mobile innovation.”
Harvest Moon ®: Pocket Ranch and other leading Liveware games will be published exclusively and integrated through the launch of PlayPhone ® Social, a new mobile cross-platform SNS destination. Optimized for mobile social gaming and networking, PlayPhone ® Social allows games publishers the opportunity to monetize and mobilize mobile social games around the globe on multiple platforms which include the iPhone, Android and web flash.
“Liveware is very excited to partner with PlayPhone ®. We believe PlayPhone’s global publishing and distribution power and its cutting-edge mobile social network platform are the best fit for Liveware games.” stated Tomoki Terui, President of Liveware.
The PlayPhone ® Social platform includes billing integration, achievements and buddy list integration with leading social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. PlayPhone ® Social’s universal platform also provides global leaderboards that allow users to share high-scores with friends and earn virtual goods and currency. Users can also redeem their virtual currency winnings for real digital goods such as ringtones, games and applications at PlayPhone’s digital store.
“The mobile social gaming space is exploding globally.” stated Mr. Hayao Nakayama, founder and major shareholder of Liveware.
Mr. Nakayama, formerly the president of SEGA and the executive responsible for making SEGA one of the top video game companies in the world, further stated “We believe the PlayPhone ® is poised to dominate this space and work with Liveware to deliver the best mobile social games to the global community.”
About Live ware, Inc.
Liveware Inc. ( www.liveware.net), is one of the leading mobile and social game provider based in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 2004. Ever since the foundation, Liveware has provided more than 800 flash game contents for the one’s portal site, “Sanmondo” and the mobile/social version of the famous “Harvest Moon” series, and other various contents in the Japanese and the worldwide market. Especially nowadays, the rapid growth of the social networking services in Japan, Liveware is providing its major titles to the top 3 Japanese SNS portals such as mixi, Mobage-Town and GREE. Not only developing and providing the content to the worldwide market, Liveware has advanced resources for mobile solution services.
About PlayPhone® , Inc.
PlayPhone®, Inc ( www.PlayPhone.com), is the market leader in delivering mobile entertainment content to individuals and social communities worldwide. As a global mobile media company, it has presence in over 25 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. PlayPhone® founded the direct-to-consumer mobile media distribution standard in 2003 and continues to establish new means for delivering wireless entertainment. PlayPhone® is based in San Jose, Calif. and is funded by top venture firms Menlo Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital and Scale Venture Partners.
About Harvest Moon ® is a trademark or registered trademark and copyright of Natsume Inc. in the U.S. and other countries, and is used by Liveware under license for Harvest Moon: Pocket Ranch.
PR & Media Contact for PlayPhone ® :
Sarah Miller
E: smiller@axismarketingpr.com
T: 310 276.2220
Thao Le
Thao@axismarketingpr.com
T: 310 276.2220