According to the Valista PR spin, with over 300 million transactions processed annually, the company already has proven its technology and established itself in the marketplace. The service being launched today is a shift for the company with a new focus on alternative revenue models in gaming. Valista believes that the industry will be making a shift toward models that entail several months of gameplay and in-game economies.

The Standard spoke with Fran Heeran, Valista's CTO, and Evanna Kearins, Director of Marketing, about the company's new service. It's clear that the company feels that the for game content as well as in-game advertising is the Next Big Thing. Heeran doesn't believe that it will replace the dominant revenue model based on individual purchases of software, but that the two models will co-exist. Braver, larger publishers will test a model where the game itself is free or offered at a reduced price, while an in-game economy of and game assets drive profit.

Valista will be offering its expertise to game companies as either a managed service or embeddable product (both white-label). The company feels that the new offering takes game developers' needs into account. Heeran described the system already being tested with an "anchor" publisher the company hopes to reveal in 2009, which focuses on entitlements, license management, and tracking attributes against player information to determine how game assets are managed over time.

The real question for Valista, of course, is whether this trend will continue in a faltering economy. PC game publishers are the obvious choice for this type of product, since consoles have their own commercial environments built into their online services. Heeran admits that the ultimate market for Valista's new offering will be smaller, niche game developers, but it will take one or two larger developers to prove that the model works. In the current economic climate, however, it may prove difficult getting those larger companies to take that type of risk.