OpenFeint, The9 Funding Ports To Android

Mobile social gaming network OpeFeint and Chinese online gaming company The9 announced a partnership to help fund developers who want to port their titles to Android devices. In this new program, OpenFeint and The9 will review and select "top games" based on their quality and previous download performance in other app stores. They will also examine the "strength" of the developers pitching their projects. Studios chosen for the program will receive funding to port their game to the Android platform with OpenFeint integration. OpenFeint and The9 will select games to bring to China, too, helping with their localization for that market. OpenFeint currently claims 68 million registered users across 4,800 games that support its cross-platform mobile social gaming network. The company is backed by Intel Capital and The9, and launched its platform for Android devices last September. This new program is bankrolled by Fund9, the Chinese-based $100 million fund for "mobile app, game engine, and platform technology developers", which was created by The9 and several other investors last December. "We launched on Android to bring gamers great content," says OpenFeint's Marketing VP Eros Resmini. "We’ve already helped launch 250 great games, but there’s still work to do." Resmini continues, "There’s a treasure trove of great games on iOS waiting for the rest of the world to discover. This fund will help make that possible for indie game developers."