There’s a big prob­lem about real-time mul­ti-play­er games: not only do game devel­op­ers need enough signed up game play­ers to match simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the data con­nec­tions just aren’t up to speed. Well, that’s the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, any­way. But Seat­tle-based tech start­up Jaw­fish Games might well have solved both prob­lems with its new gam­ing plat­form, an inven­tion which might induce Pavlov­ian drool­ing amongst clued up prod­uct man­agers.

A new era in gam­ing?

Hav­ing recent­ly raised $3.65 mil­lion from angel investors (includ­ing Right Side Cap­i­tal and Founders Fund), the plat­form is set for big things: it’s capa­ble, the firm says, of sup­port­ing 1 mil­lion tour­na­ments and 100,000 play­ers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for under $10 in band­width.  And it’ll do so across Android, iOS and the Web.

The startup’s CEO and co-founder Phil Gor­don, who helped build the plat­form with engi­neers who devel­oped the Full Tilt Pok­er site, is clear about the path ahead.  He said:

“Basi­cal­ly what we’re look­ing to do is to take games that peo­ple know and love and rein­vent them for mul­ti­play­er real-time tour­na­ments. That’s exact­ly what we’re going to do across a wide spec­trum of games.”

Prod­uct man­agers who are also pok­er afi­ciona­dos will need no remind­ing that Gor­don is a vet­er­an cham­pi­onship pok­er pro, so it’ll come as lit­tle sur­prise to find that the first game on the new plat­form will be a pok­er offer­ing. It’s been designed to look and sound like a gen­uine­ly broad­cast­ed game, fea­tur­ing Gordon’s own dul­cet tones as com­men­ta­tor through­out play.

More in the pipeline

But that’s not all. Jaw­fish Words has also been launched in part­ner­ship with Ama­zon, allow­ing play­ers to com­pete for the high­est scores on a basic word search game. And there’s more, all those sali­vat­ing prod­uct man­agers might be intrigued to hear: a clas­sic suite of games is in the pipeline, from casi­no favorites to more casu­al offerings.

Gor­don is adamant that, short of a “top 10-kind of fran­chise” show­ing inter­est, the plat­form will not be open to third par­ty devel­op­ers any time soon. As he puts it:

“We know that our plat­form is the only one of its kind in the world and we think that it’s in our inter­est to keep the plat­form close to the vest and devel­op our own games.”