Silicon-valley based PlaySpan, a publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network, announced a partnership today with IBM to introduce a fully integrated cross-platform commerce service to gamers.
Last September, Playspan
secured $6.5 million in Series A funding to position itself in the virtual goods market. Shortly afterwards, the company announced a multi-year, multiple-title
exclusive partnership with K2 Network to provide K2's online games an in-game marketplace.
Using IBM BladeCenter servers exclusively as its game-commerce server platform, PlaySpan feels it will be able to deliver a powerful, reliable, and secure platform for its software, meeting the demands of both in-game and out-of-game commerce.
"A flexible in-game commerce platform is necessary to deliver the experience that the end-user wants, whether it is player-to-player commerce, micro-transactions or more traditional models like credit or debit card transactions," said David Laux, IBM global executive for games and interactive entertainment. "PlaySpan delivers the cross-platform commerce engine that operators and publishers are seeking, with the flexibility to enable commerce for digital goods as the first publisher-sponsored marketplace.'"
