Skype busts into casual gaming market
Skype wants to get into the lucritive casual gaming business and is aggressively courting game developers to generate a diverse range of content for the VoIP service. Skype's Paul Amery announced the partnership with Easybits Software to create …
Context & Ripple Effects
Skype, the internet-calling pioneer eBay acquired, has spent early 2007 bolting paid services onto its free client: the Skype Prime expertise marketplace launched in a March 2007 beta, and the 3.2 beta added PayPal money transfers the same month. The Easybits Software partnership announced by Paul Amery extends that same playbook into casual gaming, with Skype actively recruiting outside developers to build content for the service.
First-order effects
- Casual game developers gain a new distribution channel with access to Skype's large installed base, and Easybits Software secures first-partner status in that channel.
- Skype's developer-courtship effort makes third-party content, not in-house production, the supply mechanism for games on the client.
Second-order effects
- Because the 3.2 beta already wires PayPal payments into the client, the plumbing for paid games and microtransactions exists at launch, lowering friction for developers who might otherwise need their own billing.
- Established casual-gaming portals face a competitor that bundles games with free communication, competing on engagement inside an app users already keep open rather than on destination-site traffic.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, communication clients evolve from per-minute calling utilities into content platforms whose economics rest on attached paid services — a structure eBay's ownership encourages as it seeks returns beyond call fees.
- Developer recruitment becomes the competitive variable: whichever client aggregates the most third-party content converts its communication audience into a marketplace, pressuring rivals to open their own platforms or cede the engagement war.
The trend: VoIP clients are turning into multi-service platforms where free calling is the hook and third-party paid content — expertise markets, payments, games — is the business.