Playfish may bring Facebook games to iPhone

Social games firm Playfish may bring its popular Facebook games to iPhone, Android and even handheld games consoles.

The company has just raised $17 million of new funding to fuel its expansion onto new platforms, including other web-based social networks, but also mobile and handheld.

"A bunch of platforms have been rolled out or are being rolled out that are effectively connected internet devices with gaming capabilities," says CEO Kristian Segerstrale.

"That includes high-end mobile phones like iPhone and Android, but handheld consoles are moving that way too, as well as Xbox Live and PS3."

iPhone would seem to be the most logical choice for games like Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Bowling Buddies, Word Challenge and Pet Society - all sitting inside the Top 10 Facebook games chart.

How to make money out of them is the big question for Playfish, especially as Apple isn't currently allowing games where players pay to download additional content.

"It's early days," says Segerstrale. "We've been encouraged by the consumer numbers and acceptance of gaming on the iPhone, and that's a sign of what may be possible if the rules are relaxed in future.".....

Playfish Creates Addictive Facebook Games

Company Name: Playfish

20 word description: Playfish develops and publishes video games on social networks. We’re backed by Accel and $4m in funding.

CEO’s 100 word description: Playfish develops and publishes video games on social networks. Unlike other social games companies our team’s background is video games - we’ve developed and published over 100 video games titles on other platforms (mainly mobile and casual) between us prior to Playfish. All our three titles so far are in the Facebook review games top-10 (Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge, and Bowling Buddies). We have grown to over 7 million players in less than 6 months from launch. In the month of May we served over 300 million minutes of player engagement globally (10% YouTube reviews’s stated monthly engagement).

We are backed by Accel Partners, our advisory board includes Atari CEO and long time EA veteran David Gardner. We are headquartered in London with offices in Beijing and Tromsø, Norway. We believe social games are the next really big growth opportunity for the video games industry and are working hard to be one of the leading companies in the area.

Mashable Mashable reviews’s Take:Playfish is a game developing company that creates great time wasters on Facebook. So far with $4 million in investment funding and backing from Accel Partners, Playfish has published three games, all of which rank high amongst Facebook applications; Word Challenge happens to be my favorite.

Similar to Buddy Media and a few other seemingly platform-specific developers out there, Playfish is out to make compelling games that are highly engaging for users. Throw in an ad here and there, and Playfish can work towards becoming a self-sustained platform itself. Given Playfish’s collective team experience as video game developers for consoles, online and mobile platforms, it’s evident that Playfish is capable of taking advantage of most of the gaming and social media trends out there.

Playfish is a registered iPhone developer, so I do expect to see something in the way of mobile games once the 3G iPhone is released. It would be a good route to take, considering the need for the developer community to leverage devices like the iPhone to catalyze cross-device adoption and promotion of new models occurring around the casual gaming industry.