Play Facebook games on your iPad with iSwifter ... for $2.99 a month

Wait, but aren't Facebook games supposed to be free? Why yes, yes they are. But thanks to iSwifter, an iPad app with a $2.99 monthly subscription, you can play Flash-based Facebook games right on your 10-inch tablet. (Seriously, what can't you do on that thing?)

VentureBeat reports that Youweb chairman Peter Relan, the financial incubator for iSwifter, revealed at the GamesBeat conference in San Francisco that 500 thousand Facebook gamers are paying for the app. And we're willing to bet (five bucks?) that those 500 thousand players are of the same 3 percent companies like Zynga rely on to buy their digital goods like Farm Cash and new Sheep patterns.

Considering 40 percent of all games played through iSwifter are Zynga games, according to VentureBeat, we'll take that five dollars now. The most popular games on iSwifter are CityVille and Empires & Allies--what a surprise.

iSwifter for iPad
The app converts what would be mouse clicks on standard PCs into touches in real time, meaning what you're playing within iSwifter is actually the game on Facebook. However, you must be constantly connected to a WiFi source in order to play Facebook games through the app. With all of these stipulations--and a subscription fee at that--it looks like some hardcore social gamers will stop at nothing to play their favorite games on the go.

Google+ Games hit the iPad, thanks to iSwifter update

If you're willing to pay to play a free Facebook game on your iPad, then enjoy the ability to pay to play free Google+ Games, too. VentureBeat reports that iSwifter, the nifty iPad app that allows users to play Flash-based Facebook games on the device, just opened itself up to the growing stable of games on Google+ in update 4.1.

Available for free in the App Store (though, the app itself charges a subscription fee), the update essentially allows players to access the Google+ games in a mock browser that streams the information from the Flash-based games. This is, of course, because iOS devices are notorious for their lack of Flash support.

"The iSwifter platform's "instant-on" streaming capability makes it pretty quick and easy to add new games," iSwifter founder Rajat Ali told VentureBeat. And we're gonna go off on a limb and say that Ali's words mean this is just the beginning for iSwifter.

Crime City in iSwifter for iPad
Well, until Project Spartan, the rumored not-so-secret effort to bring a full-featured, game and app-rich Facebook to mobile browsers, releases. But considering the app has garnered over 500,000 paying players since its release, we're sure iSwifter has some tricks up its sleeves to maintain relevant as the industry shifts.