Threads explore games in conversation, starting with basketball games. A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is making a prototype of the game and it is not available to the public.
The game was first discovered by a reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzziwho often find unreleased features while they are still in development. Paluzzi shared an image of a basketball game, which appears to allow users to shoot hoops by swiping their fingers. The idea behind the game is the possibility to allow friends to compete to see who can score the most baskets, similar to other mobile basketball games.
Launching games on messages will give Threads an edge against competitors like X and Bluesky, which don’t offer built-in games. It could even help Threads compete with Apple Messages, which supports gaming through third-party apps like GamePigeon.
As with the internal prototype, it is not known when or if Meta plans to officially launch the game in the Thread message.
It should also be noted that this is not the first time that Meta has explored the game in messages, since Instagram launched it The emoji game was hidden in DM last year. The goal of this game is to use your finger to move the paddle at the bottom of the screen to keep the selected emoji and keep it bouncing. If you let the emoji fall, you will lose. The idea is to compete with other people in the chat to get the highest score.
The internal prototype comes as Meta continues to build threads with new features to take on competitors. For example, the platform is broken added its Community feature with other topics, the possibility of aiming to draw users away from Reddit and X. Plus, it add “missing post” a feature that allows users to share their thoughts and participate in conversations that are automatically archived after 24 hours.
While Threads has 400 million monthly users, it still has a ways to go to reach X in the US, according to data from A Pew Research Center report was released a few weeks ago. The report says 21% of US adults say they use X, compared to just 8% who use Thread, and 4% who use Bluesky.
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