Raptr, the free service for gamers that makes it easy to see when friends are playing, chat, and compare achievements, today unveiled Version 1.0 of its service, the first application that brings together gaming friends from all the popular gaming platforms — Xbox, PS3, PC (Steam and Xfire), and social games — into one place. With hundreds of millions of people playing games on a variety of platforms, only Raptr enables users to see when friends are playing on any platform, chat with them live while in-game, and track their gameplay and achievements without having to log-in to multiple services. No other service enables real-time friend tracking, communication, and discovery among the entire universe of gamers ranging from the most casual player of social games to the most hardcore console gamer. Raptr is the gamer’s ultimate app. Over a million users participated in the Raptr beta, and Raptr is attracting 15,000-20,000 new users each day.
Highlights of Raptr 1.0 include:
-The ultimate gaming buddy list: Raptr serves as the ultimate gamer’s buddy list, the only service in the world to bring your friends from the top gaming platforms together in one interface. Raptr supports Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, and Xfire; just connect your services to Raptr and you can always know if one of your friends is playing on one of those platforms so you can join them in a game.
– In-game messaging on any IM network and cross-platform: Raptr is also the only service that allows you to chat in-game with your Facebook, AIM, and Yahoo Messenger buddies while playing popular PC games like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and StarCraft 2. In addition, Raptr supports Live Messenger, ICQ, Xfire, and Steam chat.
– Dynamically-generated profile based on the games you play: Raptr dynamically creates a single gaming profile for you based on the games you play and the achievements/ trophies you unlock.
Rapid user growth. Raptr is currently adding over 500,000 new users per month and tracking over 250,000,000 minutes of gameplay per month.
“We learned from our experience with Guitar Hero that it’s a lot more fun to play games with friends than alone,” said Kai Huang, co-founder of Red Octane and co-creator of Guitar Hero. “By making gaming more of a social experience, Raptr is doing for all games what Facebook did for social games.”
“Over the last two years we have gotten great feedback from our users that has helped us create a service that meets the needs of a more connected gamer who plays games on multiple gaming platforms,” said Dennis Fong, Founder and CEO of Raptr. “With the release of Version 1.0 we hope that gamers will be able to connect with their friends easier and make gaming even more fun for everyone.”
