First iteration of RealArcade Before RealArcade, RealNetworks had been offering downloadable games (as Real.com Games) since April 2000, amassing three million downloads by May 2001. The service was announced in March 2001, with a consumer launch set for the second quarter. The service was initially limited to developers. Over 30 developers were involved, including
GameHouse On May 14, 2001, RealNetworks launched the beta version of the RealArcade service, in an attempt to diversify its core business assets. The service was created to capitalize on the growth of the videogame industry, and would be used as a platform to boost PC game sales, in a market dominated by console games. Games were set to be priced between $10 and $20. RealNetworks was not the first company to do so, as
Shockwave.com had started selling games the week before. RealArcade was set to launch with 120 games. The rental section, which was added at the time, had eleven titles available, and planned to add three or four new titles per month. It also predicted a potential European user base of 30 million. On March 1, 2002,
StarHub Internet became the first ISP in
Singapore to distribute the service. On March 20, 2002, six new language editions of RealArcade's website launched, in French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. The move was to increase its international user base. At the time, the program had been downloaded 4.5 million times, with a grand total of 15 million game downloads and 450,000 purchases. The company had teamed up with Telstra,
StarHub, Tiscali and
Rede Brasil Sul to distribute its games either using their portals or using CDs.
RealONE Arcade On July 1, 2002, coinciding with the rebrand of RealPlayer to RealONE Player, RealArcade was renamed RealONE Arcade and added the Game Pass service In October, it inked an agreement with Vivendi Universal's Flipside, enabling access of its competitive games for its user base. An agreement with
Sega followed in November 2002 to provide ten emulated
Sega Genesis games for download. The games were made available in January 2003, while the Sega game catalog increased during 2003, with the addition of new titles. The service launched the RealOne Arcade Game Developer Showdown in March 2003, with the winner receiving both the game on RealOne Arcade and a prize of $100,000, with a prize of $25,000 for the two runners-up. The winning title was
Jammed Again!. The success of RealOne Arcade in 2003 led to profits for shareware game developers such as
PopCap Games and
GarageGames. Revenue of RealNetworks' games unit skyrocketed in the third quarter of the year.
Second iteration of RealArcade and closure With the acquisition of
GameHouse (one of its first providers) in January 2004, the software reverted to its initial name RealArcade. The following month, it announced a deal with
Cablevision's
Optimum to provide free access to RealArcade to its Optimum Online subscribers. It also launched a
Japanese version shortly before Ted Woolsey departed. New broadband deals in
France,
Belgium and the
Netherlands were announced on October 17, 2005. The mobile version launched in the same month on the O2 carrier in the
United Kingdom, using the
I-mode mobile internet service. An American launch on
Cingular followed suit. A new version, in association with
Playphone, was released the following year. In 2006, RealArcade had about 700,000 game demos downloaded per day. A new developer service launched in May that year. On July 26, it inked deals with three
German ISPs and websites,
T-Online (
Deutsche Telekom), Freenet and RTL. At the time, Germany had the largest PC game market. It published a mobile game based on the
South Park Imaginationland trilogy in July 2008. That same month, it signed an agreement with Topics Entertainment to distribute some of RealArcade's published titles in the North American retail market. Its mobile games were the highest-scored in the second quarter of 2008 by the quality index of mobile game news website Pocket Gamer, ahead of
Gameloft. RealNetworks announced in 2008 that it would spin off its casual games unit. In December 2008, it started developing six games for iOS platforms, among the first of which was
Tiki Towers. The game was also the first title to be ported to
WiiWare on December 22. On November 3, 2009, it was announced that RealArcade would merge with GameHouse, forming a single game portal. The corporate rationale suggested that RealArcade was running on "substantially older technology" than GameHouse's website. The mobile service withdrew the name RealArcade in March 2010. The last game published under the brand for mobile services was a licensed game based on the
2010 Winter Olympic Games. ==Software==