Australian betting outfit Luxbet has added social sports betting firm Favourit to its offering. Luxbet, the Northern Territory online/phone betting branch of Aussie betting giant Tabcorp, says the deal will provide its users with “a brand new social experience” by allowing them to compete against Favourit punters (whether for real money or pure pride), as well as crowd-source betting tips from the Favourit experts. Favourit entered the Aussie market in August 2012 via a similar partnership with Paddy Power subsidiary Sportsbet.
Casual Connect, the social gaming confab put on by the Casual Games Association, has added a social casino track to its upcoming do at the Congress Centre in Hamburg, Feb. 12-14. Day 3 will feature a bevy of social casino notables from both virtual and real-money gaming outfits including Playsino, Betable, RocketPlay, Playtika, Ladbrokes, Akamon and Plumbee. They’ll be weighing in on everything from State-of-the-Art Slot Machine Design to The Current Legalities of Gambling and Realities of Operating in a Regulated Business. Check out the full social casino itinerary here.
US developer RocketPlay has launched its Lucky Play Casino & Sportsbook on Facebook as well as on Zynga.com. Lucky Play combines slot machines, casino table games (blackjack, video poker) and sports betting into a single game, which might make it somewhat unique in the increasingly crowded social casino field, were it not for the fact that RocketPlay’s Sports Casino game already took the Walmart one-stop shopping approach.
Japanese gaming giant Konami, which recently teamed with Hasbro on a range of Dungeons & Dragons slot machines, is prepping a poker-themed spinoff of its popular Dragon Collection collectible-card-battling mobile game. Dracolle & Poker’s tweak is that players collect cards to build their own custom deck with which to engage in showdowns with other players based on poker hands. The new title is being released this month in Japan on iOS, with an unspecified date for Android users to join the fun.
Gamesys has launched Playboy Casino on Facebook. The bunny-branded game is a straightforward slots title that starts with a 1950s diner theme featuring buxom blonde waitresses. As users gain ‘experience points’, other slot games are revealed, with themes representing different eras of Playboy’s colorful history. Hard to believe, we know, but reviews have not been kind.
UK social gamers Plumbee have boosted their Mirrorball Slots app with Supernova, another game (the sixth) from Swedish partners Quickspin. Supernova is the first slot to make its debut in Mirrorball’s second slots room Adventure Kingdom. Since bursting onto the scene last March, Mirrorball Slots is ranked #20 on AppData’s Facebook fastest growing game chart with 1.1m monthly average users.
