Skype to develop gaming channel for causal gamers

Popular VoIP provider, Skype announced that it will be starting a gaming channel for casual gamers on its service. The channel will be developed by Norwegian firm Easybits and gamers will be able to invite their friends and engage them in multiplayer games.

Announcing the launch of the channel, Skype director Paul Amery said, "People are increasingly using Skype to interact with one another, with many choosing to play simple games like checkers or backgammon. However, the tremendous size of Skype's user-base makes it an ideal environment for multi-player and community-based games in which people can play against or collaborate with one another."

Skype is already offering free SDK tools and will be giving technical support to covert games into the GameXN framework.

Amery said that the third-party developers, who can develop the games, will be able access the 2 million strong Skype user base.