There are a lot of companies out there trying to leverage the social graph to make discovering new products, services, or tools — whatever the case may be — easier and more personalized. But, when it comes to games, few do it better than Raptr.
For those unfamiliar with the company, Raptr is a social network that revolves around gaming, which allows users to keep tabs on what their friends are doing throughout the gaming world, offering recommendations for games to play, accomplishment updates, and a host of other features. One of Raptr’s coolest features is its multi-protocol chat client that allows gamers to see what games their friends are playing in realtime, whether they’re on PS3, Xbox 360, or PC (including casual Flash games, Steam and Xfire) — even if they don’t have Raptr accounts. If one of your friends is online and playing a game, for example, you can send messages to them from the Raptr client regardless of which platform they’re on. → Read More
Online gaming startup Raptr has raised $15 million in new funding, according to a blog post on the company’s site. This round was led by DAG Ventures with Tenaya Capital and Accel Partners participating. In total, Raptr has raised $27 million.
Raptr’s mission is simple: to make it easy to play games with your friends. Essentially, Raptr is a social networking platform for gamers to track games and share achievements. Users can also share their stats, rankings, achievements, and characters with friends. And they can automatically broadcast their gaming activity to their friends on Raptr and other social sites including Facebook and Twitter. → Read More
Online gaming service Raptr has just dropped its beta tag and launched its 1.0 release, and it’s safe to say that it’s finally living up to its mission statement: to make it easy to play games with your friends.
A year ago, Raptr rolled out a multi-protocol chat client that allowed gamers to see what games their friends were playing (this included support for both PC games and console games).That worked fairly well, but CEO Dennis Fong says that it came with one big caveat: it only worked if you got your friends to sign up for a Raptr account, which was obviously a significant hurdle. Raptr’s latest release fixes this, allowing you to see if your friends are playing games on their PS3, Xbox 360, and PC (including casual Flash games, Steam and Xfire) — even if they don’t have Raptr accounts. In other words, the service is now far more useful than it used to be. → Read More
It’s clear that online gaming is quickly becoming much more social, with companies like Zynga reportedly bringing in nine figures and the casual gaming market continuing to skyrocket. But there’s still one major problem that’s holding everything back: it’s often impossible to monitor which games your friends are playing and when, especially when they’re playing on entirely different platforms. Today Raptr, the social network built around gaming, is releasing a multi-protocol chat client that’s looking to solve this problem.
The new client is based on AIR (which means it will run on Mac and PC) and integrates support for all major chat protocols, allowing gamers to keep in touch with their friends from a single app. Raptr isn’t anywhere near the first desktop multi-protocol chat client — I’ve been using Adium for Mac for years, and Windows has programs like Trillian available, both which support protocols like AIM, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. But what Raptr can do that the others can’t is monitor whatever game you’re currently playing, be it a full-fledged PC game like StarCraft or one of the many casual games found on Facebook and MySpace. Overall, the service can recognize over 32,000 different games, including stand-alone Flash games that you’ll find embedded on countless sites across the web. Raptr’s client also includes support for some game-specific protocols, like Xbox Live. → Read More
Raptr, the social network that revolves around gaming, has launched in public beta. The robust site allows users to keep tabs on what their friends are doing throughout the gaming world, and also offers gaming recommendations, accomplishment updates, and a host of other features.
The site is designed to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike. In fact, Raptr avoids using the term “gamer” entirely, instead choosing to describe itself as a “social platform for people who like to play and discover games” – founder (and former competitive gamer) Dennis Fong says that many people associate the word “gamer” with a hardcore audience, but Raptr is for everyone. → Read More
Yesterday I wrote briefly about new gaming startup Raptr, formerly called GXL, Inc. Founder (and celebrity gamer) Dennis Fong has now demo’d the product on stage at GDC, and I’ve had the chance to see the product myself. Approximately 100 people are currently in the beta, all friends and family to the Raptr team. Today the company is taking signups for new beta users on their home page, and will be letting a couple of thousand new users in shortly. A full launch is expected in a couple of months. As I mentioned yesterday, Raptr has two components. A Windows based software download that keeps games up to date automatically, and a website social network that pulls game data in from the client as well. The product is similar to Valve-only Steam, although it has a lot more to offer users and is developer agnostic. Today, Raptr supports 1,000 titles, including World of Warcraft – Steam has a hundred or so. The website is a game-centric social network. Users add friends and can see what games they are playing, installing, updating, uninstalling, etc. You can also see what games your friends are playing right now. Raptr looks at the games you play, and how much time you spend, and compares that data to other players to recommend other games to you that you might like. More Screen shots below: CrunchBase Information Raptr Dennis Fong Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Tomorrow at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, attendees will get a peak at Dennis “Thresh” Fong’s newest startup – Raptr. It’s being demo’d as part of the Charles River/GDC launchpad event in the afternoon. Raptr has both desktop software and web service components. The client keeps PC-based games completely up to date behind the scenes – patches, updates, etc. are downloaded automatically. This is very similar to Steam, which keeps Valve games updated – although from what we hear Raptr will support at least a thousand games from all different developers out of the gate. The website, at Raptr.com, will pull in gaming data from the Raptr client and will include a social network around friends, stats, games, groups and other content. The website will also include a news feed of what all your friends are up to. That’s all I know about the service for now. I should have more tomorrow. The launch date is still months away. The company is also rumored to have closed, or be closing, a significant round of funding. Dennis Fong, who’s 30, is one of the world’s top gamers. He cofounded Xfire, a freeware instant messaging service targeted at gamers, in 2003. In 2006 it was acquired by Viacom for $102 million. Fong is also an advisor to WeGame, which we covered last month. CrunchBase Information Raptr Dennis Fong Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
