By Neil Vidyarthi on January 31, 2010 9:28 PM

This Week In Social Games – Jan 31, 2010

-Weekly Recap Icon- The world of social games was abuzz this week of January 25, 2010. EA is looking for more social games companies, Sony Online Entertainment partners with Live Gamer, Taito uses OpenFeint for its iPhone titles, Break Media enters Social Gaming, and more. Read on for this week’s social gaming news.

Taito Chooses OpenFeint as Its Social Gaming Platform

The legendary Taito, creators of Space Invaders and its iPhone ports, have partnered with OpenFeint to power the social elements of their iPhone titles. Read more here.

Live Gamer Partners with Sony Online Entertainment

Live Gamer will release its Elements microtransactions platform into several key SOE titles: Everquest, Everquest II and more. The move is to standardize transactions across games, reducing barriers for gamers to engage in microtransactions.

Virtual Goods Rush Continues – $1.38 Billion Invested in 2009

This week, a report from Engage Digital Media showed that $1.38 billion was invested in 87 virtual goods related companies in 2009. A good chuck of that was in gaming, with $300 million for the EA/Playfish deal alone.

Break Media enters Gaming with Title and New Studio

Break Media announced their new game, “MMA FightPicker”. Along with the title comes the announcement of a new games studio to develop up to 13 games across their network of video sites.

Coca Cola to Use Virtual Goods on Facebook for Super Bowl

Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest advertisers, plans to run a social media campaign on Facebook that intertwines with its Cable TV advertisements.

EA Looks to Acquire More Social Games Companies

Peter Moore went on record as stating that EA was looking to acquire more social games players, possibly to help the sports side of the business, which was relatively untouched by the Playfish acquisition.