RIM Acquires Scoreloop To Make BlackBerry Games More Social

Research in Motion (RIM) has acquired social gaming company Scoreloop, which helps mobile game developers add social and in-app billing features to their games.

The social features that Scoreloop has in its SDK are similar to those in OpenFeint (arguably the best-known cross-platform mobile social gaming company), but the difference is that Scoreloop also has hooks for in-app purchases and secondary distribution systems.

On its blog, RIM says that Scoreloop will be “bringing [its] expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform.”

Of the major smartphone platforms, BlackBerry has the least-developed gaming ecosystem. It’s very telling that until this announcement, Scoreloop didn’t even have a BlackBerry version of its SDK, but did support Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s Bada.

Obviously, that’s going to change. For its part, Scoreloop says that it will “continue [its] cross platform approach” but that its “BlackBerry solution will be unparalleled.” The goal, it seems, will be to integrate the social features of the Scoreloop SDK directly into the BBM Social Platform.

Although this strikes us as a smart acquisition move, our only concern is in timing. Hopefully RIM and Scoreloop have been in discussions long enough to already have some of the platform aspects in the works. The promise of the BlackBerry PlayBook grows dimmer each day, as Android and iOS continue to evolve and Microsoft ups its game with Windows Phone.

This video from Scoreloop shows off some of the social and in-app purchasing features developers can add to their games using the SDK.