Many of you have asked about the wind down on Friends + Rivals Series 3.  That time is here.  Next Thursday, December 24th, we’ll be awarding Series 3 Spire packs, so you have 1 week to finish those Series 3 National sets.

Also due to a very significant change by Facebook around how items are published on their site, we will not be able to start Series 4 pack awards for publishing items to Facebook or granting Facebook permissions. There is a chance we’ll not be able to do a Series 4, but more details as we have them.

Based on suggestions we’ve gotten from a number of players, we’ve decided to reduce the number of 2008 cases available for purchase by 2,000.  As of this writing, there will still be about 1,500 cases available for purchase. We’ll make that change next Wednesday, 11/25.

And since a number of you have also asked, as of today we only have 3 of the Grand Slam bonus bundles left.

We know many of you have had questions about new sets in Baseball Boss.  I thought my last post would help clarify things, but since we are still getting questions, let me attempt to clarify what’s up.

As we always have, we have a number of new card sets in development for Baseball Boss. Our goal is to round out the eras of baseball that are currently not represented in the game. But, as some of you know from previous conversations, posts, and the like around here, producing new sets is never just as simple as a desire to make the cards.  There are always circumstances around photos, rights, etc. that are outside of our control.

Unfortunately - as much as we’d like to be able to say “here’s what we’ll have and by when” - we can’t. I know that’s not the answer many of you would like to hear.  And it’s not particularly the answer I want to give. What we can promise is to give you specifics and dates as soon as we know them. I want to thank everyone for their patience.

As many of you know, Baseball Boss is a little over a year old. As Gussie Busch said about his 1982 St. Louis Cardinals, it’s been “a heckuva year.”

The fun part (and the challenging part) about building games for the web is that the web evolves incredibly rapidly. A great example of this is what has happened to gaming over the past year. It’s impossible not to notice the impact social networks - and especially Facebook - have had on how people play games. After a great deal of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided the best way to build games that large numbers of people play and love is to focus our energies on developing games for social networks. To be clear, we are still extremely committed and very passionate about building fun social games.

Gridiron Live (http://apps.facebook.com/gridironlive/) is our first game on that path. Even though it is in beta and we still are doing much to improve it, it is a first-of-its-kind intersection of sports gaming and social gaming. We are very encouraged by what we’ve seen in GridIron Live in just its first 2 weeks. In the coming weeks, we will release another new Facebook game. We are proud of these two games and believe they will add significantly to the next generation of games people play on social networks.

As a current player of Baseball Boss, it’s natural to wonder what this means. The answer is twofold. First, we are not planning to take this game - or any of our existing games - down. We will continue to maintain and support them, although perhaps not at the level that the most passionate of our players would like. Second, we will launch new versions of some (and possibly all) of our web games on Facebook. We will do our best to make the transition from web game to Facebook game as smooth as possible, and do what’s right by the people who have helped make our web games what they are.

Two things are evidence of this strategy. First, Warstorm has a new card expansion coming out today. Second, we will roll out a new generation of one our current games to Facebook in November. We’ll be announcing more details in a few weeks, but the introduction of that game is close and we think it looks great. We’ve found that Facebook provides a number of opportunities to make games even more fun to play, and we’re looking forward to doing innovative things on that platform, just as we have done on the web.

Know that this is not a decision we made lightly. We recognize that not everyone will be satisfied. But it is an exciting time for Challenge Games. Our goal has always been to make Baseball Boss the greatest baseball game ever, and that has not changed. We believe this transition to social gaming will bring all our games to an entirely new audience while doing what is best for our players, our company, our employees, and our investors.