Makin' Deals -- Flipside Inc. announced today that it has signed an exclusive three-year agreement with GameHouse Inc. to distribute all skill-based cash-competition versions of GameHouse's popular game titles. The GameHouse portfolio of games includes Collapse, Mah Jong, BounceOut, WhatWord?, GemDrop and many more. The agreement allows Flipside to distribute the games on iWin, its cash-competitions channel. As part of the agreement, Flipside will power GameHouse's cash competitions channel at www.gamehouse.com .
Center of the Gaming Universe -- The annual International Casino Exhibition got underway today in London. One hundred fifty international gaming companies will showcase their products and services in the 7,300 square-meter expo hall for the next three days. ATE, the conference organizer, expects to welcome 5,000-plus attendees from more than 90 nations.
Research -- The January edition of Entrepreneur magazine featured an interesting article shedding some light on the effects of Internet fraud on consumer confidence. While the author of the piece acknowledges that the presence of fraud could hurt the growth of e-commerce, she suggests that it doesn't have as detrimental an effect as one might think. The article cites a study by ComScore Networks finding that news reports on fraud won't have "an overall negative impact on small online retailers, [because] so-called 'underworld activity' is everywhere. It's part of life." Net sales, according the research firm, have grown steadily despite such reports.