Astraware announced the release of Astraware Sudoku and OddBlob for WebOS. The games will initially work on the Palm Pre and Pre Plus, with support coming for the Pixi later on. Both releases keep with the long standing tradition of Astraware games on Palm devices.

Astraware Sudoku is a Sudoku game packed with features, including a puzzle of the day. Each day there is a new puzzle to be downloaded and solved. After players solve the puzzle, they can upload their times to the leader board to see how they compete with other players.  OddBlob is a puzzle-arcade game created from modeling clay, and featuring online leader boards for players to post their high scores in both Strategy and Panic modes.

“We’re delighted to be re-establishing our long-term relationship with Palm, and supporting the new platform with a range of great casual games,” said Howard Tomlinson, CEO of Astraware. “Our experience at supporting well-featured devices in a range of sizes and resolutions has helped us to make our first webOS games a pleasure to play, and we look forward to bringing many more titles to the platform.”

Astraware will be releasing other games for WebOS in the future, as well.

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The uber-addictive physics game Angry Birds has struck gold on the iPhone and iPod Touch, selling 6.5M units in the iTunes Store. At 99 cents a pop, that’s a hefty chunk of change for Helsinki-based developer Rovio.

The game took off when celebrities like skateboarder Tony Hawk, musician Pete Wentz, and Frankenteen Tweeted about the game, while late night host Jimmy Fallon joked about it on his NBC show.

As it became a cultural phenomenon, Angry Birds gathered steam in the spring and then finally hit the top of the charts in May in the U.S. As Apple launched the iPad, Rovio launched a $4.99 version, which has sold more than 200,000 copies. Now it is being downloaded more than 50,000 times a day.

Rovio hasn’t stopped developing the game for other platforms; next week, Angry Birds is debuting on Palm, with an Android phone version in development, as well as a PSP Mini version. Nokia phones are also a platform Rovio considers viable.

Hardly a one-hit wonder, Rovio has produced 52 games that have been installed more than 250 million times, and have become a force to reckon with in the mobile phone market – how soon before a Nintendo DS version is released, since its touch screen is ideal for the game?

Let us know if you’ve been enjoying Angry Birds.

Astraware has announced the release of Astraware Casino for mobile phones that run Android. The game is a collection of Casino games from around the world. Some of the games include Texas Hold ‘Em Poker (Limit and No Limit versions), Roulette, Slots, Blackjack and Craps.

Players have 11 games total to test their skills out on. The players will start out with $1000 of virtual money and try to grow that $1000. If luck is not on their side and they end up losing all their money, there is a bank in the game that is more than willing to loan the player more money to gamble with. The other use for the bank is a place for players to stash their mad cash they get from winning big.

“We’re thrilled to be releasing Astraware Casino for Android devices today,” said David Oakley, Astraware’s Chief Technology Officer. “We’ve designed the game to make the most of each Android phone’s capabilities, from the HTC Tattoo up to the Motorola Droid or Google Nexus One.”

Astraware Casino can be purchased from the Android Market.

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HeroCraft and Alawar Entertainment have announced they are developing Farm Frenzy for mobile phones. Farm Frenzy is a business simulation game where players have to take a struggling farm and turn the farm into a thriving agricultural business.

Players encounter challenges as they take care of the animals and attempt to make enough money to survive and build a bigger and better farm. Farm Frenzy has already been ported over to the iPhone and has done quite well, so they have decided to port the game over to more mobile phones. Developers really can’t lose when they put their games out on multiple platforms. Multiple platforms allows gamers of all types, mobile gamers, pc gamers, to enjoy the game.

“We plan to continue making games for several platforms at once, including mobile phones, to give gamers freedom of choice,” said Kirill Plotnikov, Alawar’s vice-president of publishing. “The success of the Apple iPhone version of Farm Frenzy encouraged us to move in this direction. Multiplatform games are both the wave of the future and the future of Alawar.”

There are also plans to release the game on the Nintendo DS.

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PlayFirst has announced the achievement of 5 million game downloads for mobile devices. This announcement is made even more impressive by the lack of iPhone downloads included in that number. PlayFirst was able to achieve 5 million downloads without the help of Apple and the iTunes Store that is pretty impressive.

It is no surprise that the Dash game series, which includes, Diner Dash, Wedding Dash and Doggie Dash, is largely responsible for the 5 million downloads, but it is not entirely responsible as there were new mobile IPs that have done really well too. To achieve this milestone, PlayFirst has had to adapt their games to a mobile handset or device and partner with mobile distributors. One of the mobile distributor partners, Glu, has been their biggest distributor.

“Glu has seen tremendous success from the Diner Dash franchise on mobile handsets, as casual games are a natural fit for the mobile platform”, said Jill Braff, senior vice president of global publishing, Glu Mobile. “With over 5 million downloads, it is clear that fans are excited to be playing their favorite PlayFirst games on-the-go.”

Congratulations to PlayFirst for achieving a huge milestone. Keep up the good work and I am sure we will see an announcement for reaching the 10 million download milestone.

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