The report about Snapchat’s upcoming gaming platform first surfaced on Cheddar. We should mention here that this is not Snapchat’s first attempt to capture the gaming audience. Last year, the company launched ‘Snappables’, which were basically a set of AR lens games. The new platform is reportedly codenamed ‘Project Cognac’ and it will be a much bigger step that Snapchat will be taking in the world of gaming. The upcoming platform would also let outside developers create games that would live inside the Snapchat app. It is worth noticing that according to a report in CNET, Snapchat also bought the Australian game studio Prettygreat in January this year, which also points towards the fact that the app is focussing on gaming.
In addition to this, a report emerged in The Information in 2018 that Snap is working on a gaming platform. The report also said that the company plans to launch the platform in the fall of 2018, but that obviously did not happen. However, this is completely in-line with Cheddar’s report, if we assume that the program got a little delayed. We should also add that Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent bought a 12% stake in Snap last year. Speaking on it back then, Tencent said that it wanted to “explore cooperation opportunities with the company on mobile games publishing and newsfeed.” This clearly indicated that Snap has been planning to make a move towards gaming for some time now. If you are wondering why would Snap want to add games in Snapchat, the answer to that is more user engagement, which obviously also means more money. Facebook’s Messenger app has been offering gaming-related features for years now. So, if Snapchat gets games on its platform, it would simply be adding a new source of revenue from developers who would want to place their games on the app, and also from advertisers who would want to place ads in those games. Another added benefit would be that users who would be busy playing games on Snapchat, wouldn’t really be spending too much time on Instagram.
