If you thought Research In Motion couldn’t make BlackBerry Messenger any more addictive, you’re wrong, as leaks suggests the next version will include gaming.
Reports suggest that the BlackBerry Messenger 6 will include some form of social gaming. Not much is known about this but it likely will include either games within the Messenger system or chats for games that can be found in the BlackBerry App World.
For those of you who discount RIM’s appeal in the world of the iPhone and Android, I have to remind you how good BlackBerry Messenger is. This is the ultimate, private communication network for those who are weary of the public nature of a Facebook or Twitter and it has steadily improved with video and photo-sharing.
In fact, our own Marc Flores was creepily asking a group of teenage girls today why they all had BlackBerry smartphones and they unanimously said it was because of BBM. For kids wanting a parent-free social network, this is a perfect place to go.
It’s not just for the Bieber lovers though, as BlackBerry Messenger has been a solid business tool for years now and RIM is aware that this is one of its key assets. It recently opened up access to this for third-party developers and this could lead to a new breed of BBM-connected apps.
Does gaming fit into the corporate brand of BlackBerry? Not really but the company has long been seeking users outside of the boardroom. I could easily see this being a feature that’s disabled with corporate deployments but mainstream users would be able to blab away about gaming.
What do you think, friends? Does BBM need gaming to be even more addictive or does this just reek of feature bloat? Let us know what you think in the comments.
[Via BB Community, Engadget, photo]
