In a surprise (to us) news release today, OpenFeint announced that Naoki Aoyagi has been named as CEO of the company. Mr. Aoyagi comes from parent company GREE, where he has worked since 2006. The press release points to nearly ten years of experience in financial operations and management in the tech sector.

“In just over 24 months, OpenFeint has grown to over 120 million users across 7,000 games. I thank Jason for his leadership growing the company and wish him well in his new adventures,” said Naoki Aoyagi, CEO of OpenFeint. “I’m excited to lead OpenFeint through its next phase of growth.”

In comments contained in the email accompanying the press release, OpenFeint mentioned that co-founder Jason Citron would be stepping down from his current role as CEO to pursue other interests, though no mention was made concerning whether he might be retained as a consultant. The email also said that current OpenFeint executives are currently unavailable to speak to the press at this time. No mention was made of an interim period, either, a typical step in transitioning between CEOs at many companies.

OpenFeint, part of GREE, Inc, reports over 120 million registered users playing 7,000 games across mobile platforms like iOS and Android. The companies plan to announce new integration plans within the next few weeks.

OpenFeint has described their service as “think XBOX Live meets Facebook.” They’ve quickly become the social gaming platform of choice for several game developers, even with competition from the likes of Scoreloop, Agon, and ngmoco’s Plus+ network. OpenFeint has now released a free standalone app that gives you a central location for tracking all of your gaming accomplishments, and for interacting with the rest of the community. These features were previously only accessible from within each individual game.

With the new OpenFeint app, you can see your progess, as well as that of your friends, across the entire inventory of OpenFeint enabled games. This includes global, friends-only, and personal leaderboards, as well as specific game accomplishments. You can send challenges, participate in forums, and chat/IM. There are several features to manage your profile, such as linking your account to Twitter or Facebook for the incorporation of your profile picture and friend lists. The OpenFeint app also showcases a free/lite app everyday, shining the spotlight on that particular developer.

With hundreds of games already supporting their service, and the intent to eventually bring their community features to Android as well, OpenFeint may be steadily emerging as the de facto standard for social gaming on the go.

FREE!

Game Channel : Free Games from OpenFeint

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-01-08 :: Category: Games

Today, Aurora Feint launched the version 1.0 release of their OpenFeint Mobile Social Gaming Platform. The platform, which has been in closed beta for a few weeks, includes leader boards and chat room functionality for applications that include it. Starting today, we should start to see updates from some of the publishers included in the 1.0 beta. The list of apps enrolled in the initial beta is impressive and includes games such as VectorTanks, PocketGod, 2079, Radio Flare and Lumen. The games were chosen across a wide range to show the versatility of the platform.

One of the key features with OpenFeint is the open authorization scheme. Users have the choice of authenticating into their OpenFeint account using either their Facebook, Twitter credentials, or neither. Future versions will include support for MySpaceID, OpenID, and anything else that they can get to work and makes sense.

The features of the 1.0 release, in use by the developers in the beta include:

- Player Accounts enabled with FbConnect and Twitter Integration — users have the option of authenticating with these accounts or creating a new account.

- Developer Configured Leaderboards — leader boards are very flexible, allowing the developers to tailor the leader boards to fit their games. Developers can sort the leader board as they choose and also create as many different ones as needed.

- Game Specific Chat Rooms — chat rooms are also developer configurable and allow up to 50 users per chat room.

- Global Chat Rooms with Cross Promotion of Game Titles — the global chat rooms are dynamically created as they start to fill up. There’s a maximum of 50 users per chat room.

- Sample code and API are open source (GPL licensed) — this allows the developer to modify both the display and the processing as needed and provides transparency. Some possible pitfalls could occur here, if the developer changes too much and things change though.

Additions for the 2.0 release, which is available for signup today, includes the integration of profiles and news feeds from Facebook and Twitter. Developers can apply for inclusion in the 2.0 version at http://www.openfeint.com.

Speaking with Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, the developers of Aurora Feint, they are obviously excited about the possibilities that the notification service and other features in iPhone OS 3.0 can add to their platform. The ability to be notified instantly when your friends start a game, beat your high score, etc. are all very compelling.

Read the full press release after the jump.

Continue reading OpenFeint Platform Launches With Facebook Connect and Twitter User Authentication »