GSN Games has just launched a new gaming service focused on winning real money on iOS, called Sparcade [Free]. The company has enlisted Greg Canessa, whose name you may not know but whose work you do, as he's the creator of Xbox Live Arcade, and has done high-ranking work on Battle.net, along with work at PopCap and Activision. He's been around, he's worked on some major stuff, and now he's helping to bring Sparcade to mobile. The app expands on GSN Games' real-money games efforts that have been in place online for a long time, just bringing them in a mobile-friendly format. The app has launched with 5 different games, and has expanded to the US App Store today.

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Now, while the idea behind real-money contests is not new ? Skillz in particular has been in several games ? Sparcade is designed to be the go-to hub for their experience. So all games, all transactions, they take place inside of the Sparcade app. The plan is for games developed by Sparcade, but still incorporating a lot of known intellectual property, to be added into the app over time. And the games are intended to be well-made versions of their franchises. Like the Pac-Man game that's launching with Sparcade is an original creation, but takes a lot of inspiration from Pac-Man Championship Edition [$2.99] with mazes that change as you collect dots. And that's actually one of the interesting topics about Sparcade that I discussed recently with Canessa: how do you ...