Phoenix Guild, Jason Citron's Core Gaming for Tablets Startup Gets Funding

Jason Citron is the gaming lover and developer behind OpenFeint. Started as the social gaming network of a few games he helped co-create at Aurora Feint, the system opened up and now has grown to hundreds of millions of users. It's that system that caught the eye of GREE, the Asia-based games company with hopes to reach into the US. Last year, they purchased OpenFeint for somewhere just north of $100 million dollars. Shortly after that acquisition, Jason left to do what he loves, make video games.

Earlier this year, Jason Citron announced his new gaming company Phoenix Guild with a goal to bring the core gaming experience to tablet devices. As a gamer himself, he started young with the NES, he wants to mature the gaming ecosystem we currently see on the iPad.

"It’s obvious to me that fantastic, engaging games need to be built for these devices but instead everyone’s building these lame F2P sims, a direction (to which) I believe we will see more and more developers head," commented Citron. "Core gamers are getting tablets and they want to play real games on them. The playtimes we see on tablets is indicative of this with people playing for much longer sessions on tablets than they do on mobile phones."

Today it was announced that his startup received its first round of funding and is going full steam ahead in developing its first game. While we can't say anything about the game, the amazing graphic below from their artist should give you an indication of the quality we can expect.

Phoenix Guild is currently staffing up (HINT: yes, they are hiring) and we should see their first game around the end of the year. We'll keep you informed.