Tango isn’t going to develop games itself — though it has designed a few of those in the past. Rather, it wants to power social communications elements for the gaming industry, and it has already gained traction with one of the giants of the mobile entertainment space in Gameloft.

In the next week or so, Gameloft will launch a title called Candy Block Breaker for Tango, a game which uses the company’s communications platform as its social layer, Tango CTO and co-founder Eric Setton said. Tango is working with a dozen developers and publishers big and small, though the only other partner Setton would reveal was Australian game studio Bubble Gum Interactive.

Tango launched as an video chat app in 2010 at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference, but in the last three years it has grown at an incredible pace, adding messaging and voice capabilities and signing up 120 million users. As Tango’s network grew, Tango began layering on content and social media elements, which became its primary revenue source. Among its popular features were a handful of social games users could play while chatting via text or voice, Setton said. The company is now hosting 20 million games sessions each month.

Social networks like Facebook have evolved into communications networks, and Tango felt that street ran both ways. With a huge user base under its belt, the company could turn its underlying network into a platform for social gaming communication.

It has released an SDK that developers can use to integrate messaging, voice and video chat features into their social, multiplayer and networked games. Bigger shops like Gameloft will still host their own gaming sessions, overlaying Tango’s features on top, while smaller outfits can actually host their gaming sessions on Tango’s network, Setton said.

The idea is that anyone who is a Tango customer will be instantly available over the gaming network, and gamers can use their address books within game sessions just as they would use them in the Tango app. In addition, to communications services, Tango can provide basic gaming social layer features, such as point tracking, standings and leader boards. Tango will make its money through revenue share agreements.

Tango isn’t the first OTT provider to try this model. KakaoTalk and Line have pioneered the concept in Asia, though Tango will be the first tackle it in the West. “In my opinion this is going to the business model for the entire mobile industry,” Setton said.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to charge for communications services, so most OTT providers are forced to give their core messaging, voice and video chat features away for free, Setton said. The only way to make money is to use those networks as conduits for paid content.

At GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Jack Buser, Sony’s senior director of PlayStation digital platforms, talked about why Sony developed the PlayStation Mobile platform for PlayStation games that can, for the first time, be played on devices not made by the Japanese company. The short answer to that is basically that they had to: Sony had to reach gamers on the devices they are already using.

“We embraced PlayStation Mobile because we know there are situations where gamers may only have their mobile device and we want to supply a PlayStation experience no matter what,” Buser said.

That list of devices includes smartphones and tablets made by HTC, Fujitsu and Sharp, among others. The theme? They’re all Android-based devices.

The benefit to participants is free marketing. For Android game makers that want to build for the PlayStation Mobile platform — which will play games on the PlayStation Vita as well as PlayStation-certified mobile devices — Sony will use all the marketing heft it has behind its multiple gaming channels to advertise and promote those games.

Recognizing the role of mobile, and that people are used to paying 99 cents and not $49.99 for games, Sony is rolling out a mobile subscription gaming plan too. PlayStation Plus is a subscription service for the PS3 and PS Vita. Five dollars per month delivers a new set of games to the user. They’ll be big titles, too, he promised. Not many casual games.

Sony is promoting “console games for console gamers,” Buser said, likely referencing mobile gaming leader Zynga, not “farm simulators.”

Update: This post was corrected at 9:49 a.m. on 9/21 to note that PS Plus is for PS 3 and PS Vita customers. It has not yet been announced whether the service will be available to other PS Mobile devices.