14 DAY TRIAL // Google, the company which dominates the Internet search business and advertising in new media, has announced details linked to the Chrome Web Store, a new marketplace type space which is built to deliver more content to its web browser, with a significant video game presence.
The Chrome Web Store is integrated with the new version of the browser and Google probably hopes that it will be a direct competitor to the Apple App Store and other similar devices.
There are close to 200 titles listed on launch under the Games category, with publishers which take part including Zynga with its very popular FarmVille, Namco with Burger Time Deluxe, Digital Chocolate with Millionaire City and Electronic Arts.
Titles the publisher has delivered on the Chrome Web Store include: Poppit, FIFA Superstars, Lords of Ultima, Mirror's Edge 2D and Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online.
The titles have until now been delivered on the social platform Facebook and are a sort of partner titles for some of the biggest franchises the publisher has, like Tiger Woods and FIFA, and effort is made to create a new breed of smaller, more focused experiences for more casual players, like Poppit and Lords of Ultime.
Sundar Pichai, who is the vice president in charge of Product Management at Google, has stated, “People want to get paid for their apps, but they don't want to trust a small, independent developer. That's one of the problems we wanted to solve with the Chrome Web Store.”
John Schappert, who is the chief operations officer at Electronic Arts and who showed off a premium version of Poppit, which will be free, was also present to point out that the company is involved in the spread of the small games model.
He stated, “We were able to convert into a state-of-the-art HTML5 web app in less than 48 hours. It's blazing fast. It's simply the fastest Poppit we've made.”