In order to continue to position themselves as THE social network for gaming, MySpace announced today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that they are launching a new “MySpace Games Experience”.  We are not sure what that means and the press release is scant on details. 

For users, they say, it will be easier to discover and share games virally. 

That is all fine and dandy but we can’t figure out for the life of us why they say “sharing games virally” a feature for users.  Isn’t that a feature for developers and game companies?  Hang on a minute while I go find a game to play that i can share virally with all my friends.  Isn’t the goal of gaming to have fun? 

The new gaming features will give developers “improved application engagement and analytics tools so you have more intelligence on the demographics of who is using your games, how they’re discovering them and how they’re being shared”

Granted they are making efforts to entice developers to their platform.  They are offering workshops and advice to game developers at this conference for example.  They also appear to be committed to improving developer tools and analytics to give them a better chance of being successful on the platform.  With facebook, hi5, bebo, iPhone, Android and the plethora of other app stores out there, it won’t be easy.    They are however, still the second largest social network (behind facebook of course).  If they play their cards right, they just might be able to pull it off.

Also of interest is their new venture into iPhone gaming.  They have launched one MySpace app called MySpace Neon which includes access to 8 social games on MySpace.  Smart move.

Here is a screenshot of their Games page today.  Farm Town is featured four times, it looks like they want all their users to start farming!  (or it is a bug and just maybe their new Gaming Experience software is not working properly??)

Here is their press release.