Apple Needs This: Mplayit iPhone Arcade

Mplayit, formerly known as Mpowerplayer, is really making its rounds. The virtual video game arcade that lets you “try before you buy” has moved from its website to Facebook, then MySpace, and now the iPhone. The iPhone Arcade is actually an application on Facebook, but it enables you to preview games as well as iPhone applications before you purchase them.

If you recall, Mplayit’s previous application on Facebook allowed you to essentially preview mobile games before you spend the money to download them onto your phone. With the new iPhone arcade, Mplayit is looking to provide an iPhone-specific resource for users of the device, while also expanding beyond the game sector. The iPhone arcade includes both mobile games and mobile applications, which are all-encompassing when it comes to the iPhone. Have you noticed?

But here’s the hitch. Apple doesn’t actually allow developers to create a game-play preview for the web. So Mplayit has created a workaround of sorts, which is a concession many developers end up taking for Apple’s software developer kit. What Mplayit has done is provide an indirect preview experience for iPhone games and applications, showing you videos of how the game or app will work on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

What’s great about the new Mplayit iPhone arcade is that it provides a rather robust recommendation system for iPhone applications. Even if this iPhone arcade were a stand-alone site it would be beneficial to iPhone users. But the iPhone arcade is a Facebook application, which means there’s a social graph for users to take advantage of when it comes to sharing their thoughts and experiences on games. The iPhone arcade application on Facebook has some direct recommendations as well, such as displaying other games from the same developer based on what you’re previewing.

Merely tracking viewing behavior for various game previews can provide a wealth of detail to game designers and developers, as well as marketers. So from a marketing standpoint, Mplayit’s recommendation engine can drive a lot of traffic to various games, which turns into money for the developers. This is an issue that Apple hasn’t yet dealt with in a satisfactory manner–searching for applications is clunky and non-intuitive on iTunes, and it’s difficult to get a feel for a given application if you’re relying solely on iTunes for information. The power of a socially-driven, user-generated application full of iPhone app reviews means that the experience of the application is readily shared through the iPhone arcade.

To really play this up, Mplayit is also allowing developers to promote their products through its applications. “Sponsored spots” makes sense, given the format of Mplayit’s socially integrated applications, and provides further monetization for Mplayit itself.