On June 7th 2011, Research in Motion (RIM) announced that they had acquired mobile gaming developer Scoreloop. RIM, creators of the popular BlackBerry series of mobile devices, made the announcement in part on their development blog. Scoreloop, known for creating gaming toolkits that bring social networking features to mobile games, currently only offers its SDK to Android, Apple, Windows Phone 7, and Bada OS developers. With this acquisition, Scoreloop has stated that it has an “unparalleled” BlackBerry SDK in the works, but will continue their cross-platform support for other mobile OS platforms.Scoreloop’s social gaming development kit offers a wide variety of features that can be integrated into mobile games. The features range from contact integration from social networking sites such as Facebook, leaderboards for game scores, and achievements for completing in-game challenges. One of the most financially lucrative features, however, is the option to add in-game purchases of additional content. By placing a virtual store in the game itself, a revenue stream can be generated from any game, targeting players that want more content immediately.
RIM’s BlackBerry was well known previously for having a “strictly-business” image, but this has changed recently. It isn’t any secret that RIM has had some recent troubling financial news. They have seen the BlackBerry go from second place in the mobile phone market in October of 2010, to their current third place in the course of a few months. The recent focus on gaming and social applications is likely in response to this decline, in an attempt to compete with similar Android and iPhone offerings. The Scoreloop acquisition is just one part of this new image. The popular game “Angry Birds,” for instance, was highlighted in RIM’s recent May keynote speech.While it remains to be seen if RIM’s new interest in social networking and gaming will help it regain a portion of its lost market share, the fact that it is changing to meet the new demands of the market is a good sign. As a business, it is important to be accepting of change and to act quickly to adapt products and services to fit what customers are after. One of the worst mistakes a business can make is to let one of its competitors meet new consumer demands before they do. The risk of losing customers is high, and once they’re gone, it can be very difficult to get them back.
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