Boston-based Skyhook Wireless announced this week that its location-finding technology will be embedded in Sony Computer Entertainment’s forthcoming “NGP” handheld gaming system, which will roll out in late 2011. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the news comes on the heels of some other recent customer wins for Skyhook, including Intel and Citysearch. Skyhook’s software blends Wi-Fi, cellular, and GPS data to provide a fast location reading for mobile devices.

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Now we know why Seth Priebatsch was so happy about Facebook Places last week. His company, Cambridge, MA-based SCVNGR, said today it has integrated its game layer and activities platform with Facebook Places, meaning people can now post their SCVNGR check-ins and “challenges” to Facebook and share them with friends.

It’s not a big surprise, but it is part of a major media blitz for the startup this week. SCVNGR has also announced rewards and challenges partnerships with AT&T and Zipcar, as well as other bits and pieces of its business strategy. (On the Boston-area community front, the company is also helping to bring the Quest for Innovation, an interactive mobile game, back to Kendall Square on September 23.)

To date, the company has stayed relatively under the radar of the national press, but has recently garnered more attention from the likes of TechCrunch, Mashable, The Boston Globe, and The Huffington Post.

There has been tons of noise in the location-based services and mobile gaming sectors lately. Prietbatsch told me last week that companies like Foursquare have been very “loud” about getting their message out to consumers and the media, and that SCVNGR was learning to do that better.

With all its new partnerships, the company is starting to put some real distance between itself and its competitors in location-based gaming and rewards. It still needs more consumers and businesses to use its platform, but if this week is any indication, SCVNGR could be on its way to becoming a household name.

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“I’m the only person in location who’s happy today.”

That was Seth Priebatsch last Thursday. It was the morning after Facebook announced its new feature, Facebook Places, that lets people “check in” using their iPhone or iPad (or location-aware laptop) and share their location with their social network. The general consensus among tech observers is that location-based mobile startups like Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah, and SCVNGR all have some adjustments to make, now that the 500-pound gorilla (with 500 million users) has put its foot down in their territory.

Priebatsch, 21, is the founder and head of Cambridge, MA-based SCVNGR, one of the darlings of the Boston mobile scene. So why is he happy? Because, he says, his company is based around “challenges” and “being the game layer on top of the world,” not around check-ins per se—meaning just a social network plus location. “Come on, Facebook was going to own that,” he says. “And now they do.”

A little background is in order here. SCVNGR started in 2008 out of DreamIT Ventures, the Philadelphia-based incubator and fund, as a text-message-based platform that corporations, associations, and nonprofits could use to set up interactive scavenger hunts and other on-site activities. The startup has since raised a couple rounds of venture funding from the likes of Highland Capital Partners, Google Ventures, and Bantam Group. It has also gone from five employees to about 60 in the past 15 months.

Paralleling the rise of Foursquare and other mobile check-in and rewards services, SCVNGR has evolved into a multi-pronged business that includes a relatively recent consumer-facing game, in which people can do challenges (some goofy, some not) at different locales. Consumers earn points for commenting, posting photos, or checking in with friends. They can also create their own challenges for others to do.

The company is also about to roll out a new online platform for small businesses to build rewards programs—players will be able to earn points and redeem them for things like a free coffee or burrito from local shops. The program will start with about 60 businesses in Boston, and then will look to expand to places like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. “It’s insanely powerful for local businesses, but super easy to implement,” Priebatsch says.

But SCVNGR’s main revenues come from conventions, events, and tours that sign up … Next Page »

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Seattle-based Big Fish Games, a leading casual game developer and distributor, has teamed up with Z2Live to add new voice chat and multiplayer capabilities to Big Fish’s iPhone and iPad “Big City Adventure: San Francisco” applications. Z2Live, a social mobile gaming startup, first unveiled its multiplayer voice chat feature, which will allow players to talk to each other while playing a mobile game on devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, before the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco back in March. However, Big Fish’s hidden object game is the first to actually use the feature, which also enables players to send push notification and e-mail invites to friends. Seattle-based Z2Live raised $3 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group last August.

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Burlingame, CA-based Aurora Feint, maker of the OpenFeint social mobile gaming platform used by thousands of Apple iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad developers, has raised $5 million in new funding from Chinese gaming company The9 Ltd. and technology incubator YouWeb, according to a report in VentureWire. The company plans to use some of the funds to adapt its platform for Android phones, executive chairman Peter Relan told the publication. The company previously raised $3.7 million in a November 2009 funding round.

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This week is nuts for videogame companies: the annual Game Developers Conference starts today in San Francisco.

Z2Live, a Seattle-based social mobile gaming startup, kicked off what is sure to be a busy news week for local companies by making a couple of notable announcements. First, it unveiled a “voice chat” feature for games on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad—this will let players talk to their friends while they’re playing a mobile game. (I haven’t seen the demo yet, but it sounds like it could be interesting.)

Second, the company has hired Lou Fasulo, the former head of publishing for Sonic Boom and senior exec at Vivendi Universal Games and AT&T Wireless. Fasulo will oversee Z2Live’s development of what it calls a “next-generation mobile game community,” which it plans to open in the next two months.

Z2Live’s CEO and co-founder David Bluhm calls Fasulo “one of the best business minds in mobile gaming.” (Bluhm also told me recently that he thinks the term “mobile gaming” will soon be redundant.)

The company’s core technology is a software platform for developing multiplayer social games on mobile devices. Its gaming canvas runs the gamut from simple casual games like Solitaire to complex multiplayer games like Call of Duty. But Z2Live’s real value is not just in the “plumbing” to allow multiplayer gaming to happen, but potentially in the deeper understanding of gaming communities—things like how to grow a community, how to encourage more social interactions, which metrics to track, which game mechanics developers should focus on, and, of course, how to make money from all of this.

“In theory, this could change the trajectory of game community growth—making sure the game itself is designed with the community in mind from the start,” Bluhm told me last month in an exclusive interview.

Stay tuned for more news from other local game companies.

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Things are really heating up in the casual games business. Today, Hong Kong-based Infinity Equity announced it has invested $20 million in Oberon Media, a major developer of casual games and gaming platforms. Oberon is based in New York, but has a publishing office in Seattle called I-Play. The news comes on the heels of last month’s $83 million financing of Seattle-based Big Fish Games (which was led by U.K.-based Balderton Capital), which seems to reinforce the strength and global reach of the Seattle-area gaming cluster.

Oberon is known for building gaming platforms, including billing and advertising tools, as well as publishing and distributing casual games across various online, mobile, and interactive TV platforms. Oberon acquired I-Play in 2007, which led Oberon to merge its Seattle-based game studio (Oberon Games) into the I-Play publishing division. Earlier this year, local gaming guru Don Ryan, who oversaw Oberon’s Seattle office, moved to New York and was promoted to chief operating officer.

Now it appears Oberon is making a play for China’s exploding casual-gaming market, which currently stands at 50 million users and $2 billion in annual sales, according to Infinity Equity. It will be interesting to see whether the company’s Seattle office plays a role in building relationships overseas. “Expanding our business into China is an important part of Oberon Media’s global strategy,” said Tal Kerret, chairman of Oberon, in a statement. “This new partnership will serve as an asset for extending our pursuits there and establishing an Oberon Media presence on the ground.”

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Seattle mobile-gaming companies Mobliss and Reaxion have announced they are merging into a new company called PressOK Entertainment, which will be led by Reaxion CEO Colin Prior. Mobliss is known for its existing-brand titles like Deal or No Deal, while Reaxion makes original titles like Detective Puzzles. The deal is being viewed as a sign of consolidation in the mobile entertainment market.

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