Chillingo’s Crystal aims to deliver social gaming to the iPhone

Chillingo has recently announced Crystal, its social gaming platform for the iPhone, which provides developers with a “fully integrated and transparent framework to include social features in their games.”

The free for everyone platform, Chillingo sees it as iPhone’s answer to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Xbox Live. In that sense, it will enable players to create their own profile, add friends, store achievements and game histories and compete with friends via direct challenges in multiple games. It is fully integrated into popular social network gateways such as Facebook Connect and Twitter, and will also allow players to discover games they like more easily.

Sounds promising, hence Chillingo’s Chris Byatte doesn’t hide his enthusiasm, saying: “Crystal gives developers and gamers a bigger plus all round. It is set to become the de-facto social gaming standard for iPhone and iPod touch.”

We’ll see where that goes. In the meantime, there’s a dedicated website where you can sign-up to be informed when Crystal SDK is out.