14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo is trying to become a player in the game industry by launching its Yahoo Games Network platform, as well as the Yahoo Classic Games site.
The sites that the company has released now aren’t in their final form and more improvements are planned for the near future. In the meantime, however, this is still better than what Yahoo had to offer previously.
“Today, we are excited to introduce the Yahoo Games Network, our brand new platform for third-party game developers who want distribution of the Yahoo network in addition to easy onboarding services that help them authenticate players, monetize their games, provide social sharing, analytics and ongoing operational support for growth. We’re also launching the new Yahoo Classic Games with a beautiful, elegant, and easy-to-use design that plays seamlessly across the Web, Android devices and iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch,” Yahoo’s announcement reads.
The Yahoo Games will include classic games that have been on Yahoo’s site for years, such as Poker, Pool or Bingo, as well as newer names such as KingsRoad, The Last Stand: Deadzone, Bingo Blingo, Vegas World and Slotomania.
The company said it has already started working with multiple game developers, including Namco Bandai America and DreamWorks, as well as others, both for the web and mobile.
Yahoo hopes to get game developers excited about the fact that they can reach 800 million users worldwide that the company’s sites enjoy. It should be pointed out, however, that the vast majority of these millions of users don’t usually play games, and even less pick Yahoo’s platform to do so.
Truth be told, Yahoo’s new platforms bring a fresh look. The Games Network is new and dedicated to developers, while the Classic Games page is a simple redesigned one.
It looks a lot better than it previously did and it resembles the other popular games stores pages, such as those on Google Play, dividing games into categories, as well as “Recommended,” “Popular” and “Newest.”
The company’s efforts to revive its name in the gaming industry by providing these platforms falls in line with Yahoo’s overall efforts to bring young users back to the site. This started a while back, when Marissa Mayer became CEO and has been going on ever since.
The company’s logo got redrawn to look younger; most major services were subjected to massive redesigns and Yahoo has been buying a lot of start-ups. Last year, it bought Tumblr, a blogging platform that is particularly popular among the younger demographic.