Bon Jovi-themed items in CrowdStar's Happy Aquarium
After living on a prayer, Bon Jovi will be living on Facebook credits now. The band has partnered with popular game publisher on Facebook, CrowdStar, to bundle their digital album and virtual goods on three of CrowdStar’s popular social games: It Girl;Happy Aquarium; and Happy Island.
Players will be offered to purchase the Bon Jovi Greatest Hits Bundle as they go about doing their usual work on CrowdStars above mentioned games. The bundle includes a digital download of Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits, Bon Jovi-theme items, and Facebook Credits, as well as a coupon code that can be used at the Bon Jovi online store.
If this unique distribution strategy for Bon Jovi takes off, then there is no doubt we will be seeing a lot of artists and artist-theme items on social games. We can also expect to buy other digital contents like movies, video games, and softwares through our favorite games in the near future. In the meantime, I bet Bon Jovi will be singing “Thank You For Loving Me.”
Microsoft, probably the biggest and the leading multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports computer software, is reported to be indulging on talks with CrowdStar. The social game company, CrowdStar, is behind the hit Facebook games, Happy Aquarium and Know-it-all Trivia. Microsoft is said to be planning its big entry into the world of social games.
A week after Microsoft announced that it will bring Zynga games to its online properties, such as MSN and Windows Messenger, Bloomberg Business Week has reported that Microsoft has already expressed its intent to purchase CrowdStar for $200 million. Microsoft is already engaging in talks with the social game company. It is said that a deal may be made in a few weeks. $200 million is a staggering number but is roughly half the amount that the publishing giant, Electronic Arts, paid for Playfish.
CrowdStar may not be as popular as Zynga or Playfish. (Zynga is responsible for making Facebook fanatics go gaga over games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars while Playfish created a craze with their games such as Pet Society and Country Story.) It can still be considered as a great investment since it ranks fourth among the biggest developers on the social networking site. Its hit game Happy Aquarium is actually ranked as the sixth most popular game. In addition, CrowdStar has only been in this business for two years but this fall, it was able to gain $1 million per month profit.
Representatives from both companies remain mum about the reported talks. Meanwhile, Microsoft has expressed that they would not comment on rumors or speculations.
