Tomorrow at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, attendees will get a peak at Dennis “Thresh” Fong’s newest startup – Raptr. It’s being demo’d as part of the Charles River/GDC launchpad event in the afternoon.
Raptr has both desktop software and web service components. The client keeps PC-based games completely up to date behind the scenes – patches, updates, etc. are downloaded automatically. This is very similar to Steam, which keeps Valve games updated – although from what we hear Raptr will support at least a thousand games from all different developers out of the gate. The website, at Raptr.com, will pull in gaming data from the Raptr client and will include a social network around friends, stats, games, groups and other content. The website will also include a news feed of what all your friends are up to.
That’s all I know about the service for now. I should have more tomorrow. The launch date is still months away. The company is also rumored to have closed, or be closing, a significant round of funding.
Dennis Fong, who’s 30, is one of the world’s top gamers. He cofounded Xfire, a freeware instant messaging service targeted at gamers, in 2003. In 2006 it was acquired by Viacom for $102 million. Fong is also an advisor to WeGame, which we covered last month.