Remember Castlevania for the Nintendo? That was the hottest game out 20 years ago! Konami, the company behind Castlevania, Dance Dance Revolution (also an awesome game), and numerous other console games is looking to get into the social gaming space. The company has launched Konami Play to leverage their existing game assets. The company has already launched Facebook Connect integration and plans on launching a virtual currency which leverages a sweepstakes incentive structure in the coming weeks.

The social gaming space continues to heat up and now the largest players all appear to have some sort of involvement in it. With the numerous monetization opportunities to big to ignore, Konami, Electronic Arts, and many others, are all jumping in. The gaming space also has its own industry of payment providers and monetization solutions built around (many of which sponsor this site).

Whether or not monetization is a big opportunity for game companies that generate billions of dollars, there is still a good chance that brand name games will quickly attract a large number of people. The iPhone already has a large number of games that have been ported from other platforms. Electronic Arts has already launched Scrabble, and Sega launched Sonic the Hedgehog, both of which proved to be extremely successful.

While I’m not sure Konami’s strategy of creating their own destination site is the best, I’m sure the company will still be able to generate a decent amount of traffic. It’s interesting to see mainstream gaming companies take the leap into the online casual and social gaming space. Now go see what high score you can pull of on Frogger, which is currently available on the Konami Play website.