This article is more than 1 year old
If BlackBerry killed off its social gaming platform, would anybody notice?
El Reg in quantum news experiment
Sticking to its knitting, BlackBerry is closing Scoreloop - the German social gaming platform and tools company it acquired in 2011 for $71m. The Canadian mobile phone company once known as RIM told the Wall Street Journal that this was in line with its focus on enterprise.
When BlackBerry bought Scoreloop, it was at the height of its trying-to-be-Apple period, and Scoreloop was adding 100,000 iOS and Android users to its platform a day.
As it became clear that the strategy was not going to work, Scoreloop refocused on providing a cross-platform operator-billing-friendly environment, supporting iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and of course BlackBerry - but it failed to find traction. The online services will close on December 1st.
As BlackBerry has moved from being QNX-focused to Android compatible and has done deals with Amazon for distribution, it’s become less important for BlackBerry to run its own apps ecosystem: and Scoreloop has become irrelevant.
Even CEO Dr Marc Gumpinger appears to have left last month, his LinkedIn profile saying he is working at a stealth company. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
