Advertisement

OpenFeint's promotional app now called Game Channel

Social gaming network OpenFeint has had its own app for a while now, offering up news and information for players playing games with the technology built-in. But the app recently underwent a re-branding of sorts -- it's now called Game Channel (not to be, or possibly to be, confused with Game Center), and is now built around a Groupon-style model. The app has offered up a Free App of the Day for a while now, but in addition to the freebies, it now also has a feature called "Fire Sale," in which players can "vote" for certain games to go on sale.

It'll be interesting to see how that works -- one of the biggest issues developers are facing on the App Store is simply getting their app discovered by players, and this seems like yet another outlet for OpenFeint-enabled games to find their customers. The app also helps with discoverability in other ways as well: you can see what your friends are playing, and track leaderboards and all of OpenFeint's other stats right there.

It's tough to actually call this an attack on Game Center, since Game Center isn't really in competition -- it's already installed on every mobile iOS device anyway. But Game Channel does look like a little innovation from OpenFeint in terms of getting its apps out there. If you haven't picked up the app now called Game Channel, it's a free download from the App Store.