Lycos relaunches game portal

In a move Lycos hopes will make its casual game offerings more appealing to the 18-to-35-year-old male gamer, the company is rebranding its Gamesville casual games portal--henceforth to be known as Lycos Games. Korean-owned Lycos hopes to gain exclusive rights to popular casual titles from Asia and Europe and is positioning itself "as a strategic partner for smaller game developers who don't have the resources to make their games available for widespread distribution in the US," according to the company. Lycos Games aims to tap revenues from downloads, advertising, subscriptions, and micropayments for in-game items. The first new game it is promoting is Albatross 18, a golf sim from Korea that company execs see as appealing to men as well as a core gaming market. It is, according to Lycos CEO Alfred Tolle, a sign of things to come: "Lycos has been pretty dormant in the games space over the past three years, but in the coming months, we will continue to partner with global companies, to bring exclusive new games content to the US, giving our millions of Lycos users access before anyone else."