Online gaming business has been booming in the past couple of months owing to the lockdown enforced in various countries across the globe in light of the Covid-19 lockdown. To capitalise on this momentum, Facebook is planning to launch a gaming app today.
According to a report by The New York Times, the social media giant is planning to launch a stand-alone gaming app on Monday. The company has been testing the Facebook Gaming app in Latin America and Southeast Asia over the past 18 month and it was earlier planning to launch the app in June. However, the sudden surge in online gaming owing to the lockdown forced the company to reconsider its decision and launch the app in April and capitilise on the demand.
Facebook will first release the app on the Google Play Store for Android devices. The iOS version of the app will be released when the app is approved by Apple.
Additionally, the report states that Facebook is focusing on the mobile version of the app rather than computer viewing. This means that when launched, Facebook users may be able to access the platform only via their smartphones. Simply said, the company might restrict the ability to access the platform and stream games via web-based interface.
“We don’t want to be the background window in a Chrome tab while someone is doing their homework or doing something else…With mobile, if you have the app open and you’re using the app, it’s in the foreground. You can’t do anything else on your mobile phone, and that is extremely powerful,” Vivek Sharma, Facebook’s VP for gaming said in a statement.
Coming to the feature, NYT says that the app will include casual games. It will also come with access to gaming communities. In addition to that, the app will feature a functionality called ‘Go Live’ that will allow users to upload streams that can be then shared on their Facebook pages easily.
As far as the ads are concerned, the app, in the beginning, will have no advertisements. The social media company will make money, in the form of commission, when users send ‘stars’ to streamers. Facebook, as per the report, wants to build an audience before it monetises the app.
