Yahoo! Games, likely best known for its online Flash and Java-based casual games, is seeking to attract attention in other gaming fields through a series of strategic partnerships announced today. The company will be working with internally-owned product All-Seeing Eye, an Internet games browser, as well as external consumer gaming site GameSpot, in order to strengthen its presence in the videogame area.
Yahoo acquired All-Seeing Eye in September 2004, and is currently working on integrating the service into its existing website, as well as Yahoo Messenger, to draw players of popular multiplayer games like
Doom 3,
Counterstrike, and
Medal of Honor. They'll also be offering an updated SDK to game developers, to encourage built-in compatibility with All-Seeing Eye services such as matchmaking and instant messaging.
In addition, Yahoo's game site will offer feeds of GameSpot news, previews, and reviews, as well as GameSpot's downloadable content, though presumably one will still need to be a member of GameSpot Complete to access content previously locked behind GameSpot's pay membership service.
Yahoo recently acquired consumer games site GamesDomain as part of a UK-based deal to buy the Dotmusic site, but has, of late, been running syndicated content from games site GamerFeed on the GamesDomain subsite, and now looks likely to push the GamesDomain name further into the background.
Finally, to manage the larger site, Yahoo is hiring Patrick Ford and Thom Kozik as Director of Video Game Products and Director of Business Development for Yahoo Games, respectively. Both were previously at All-Seeing Eye before Yahoo's buyout. The expanded service is due to launch in the first quarter of 2005.
