VentureBeat |
- Former EA leader Jamil Moledina switches focus to cross-platform social games
- The DeanBeat: The critical season for game sales is upon us
- Cloud gaming service OnLive offers crazy discounts this Thanksgiving weekend
- Amazon Cyber Monday deals: $199 Xbox 360 bundle, $300 Nokia N8, and more
- Over $1K for a virtual spaceship? 2000 Dark Orbit players say ‘yes’
- Peter Molyneux parody account ‘Molydeux’ suspended by Twitter
- Mapping Black Friday insanity on Twitter (infographic)
- CloudBeat 2011: the final agenda and speaker list
- TrialBee could save lives by bringing drugs to market faster
- EA finally starts issuing Battlefield 1943 vouchers to PS3 gamers
| Former EA leader Jamil Moledina switches focus to cross-platform social games Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:00 AM PST
Jamil Moledina envisions a future in which all games are cross-platform. And to help make that future a reality he left a job at video game giant Electronic Arts to take on the role of vice president of business development at social games company Funzio. Moledina was formerly the director of business development for the EA Partners program, which included forging relationships with development talent to publish games across a variety of platforms. Prior to that he served as executive director of the Game Developers Conference and editor-in-chief of Game Developer magazine. His new role is much less defined, he says, likely due to the fact that the company is much smaller than his previous employers. That startup mentality is part of what attracted Moledina to the company. But it was also Funzio's focus on cross-platform development, a concept that aligned nicely with Moledina's own views on where the games industry is headed. Funzio's first release, Crime City, has been successful across three platforms, garnering millions of users across Facebook, iOS, and Google+. The iOS version of the game is frequently listed amongst the top 10 grossing apps in Apple's App Store. "This was incredibly illustrative to me of what this company has been able to do," Moledina told VentureBeat of Funzio's cross-platform success. "There's competing conventional wisdom out there that speak to the fact that you must make a mobile game that is specifically tailored in technology and community and design to the mobile market. But what Funzio showed was that you could create a universal design that works on multiple social platforms with a high degree of monetization and success." From Funzio’s perspective, it seems that Moledina’s diverse background is what made him a good fit for the company. “He brings a broad range of strategic skills from the game industry,” Funzio CEO Ken Chiu said in a statement, ”both in terms of sourcing and analyzing innovation, as well as creating successful businesses from emerging market opportunities.”
Moledina says that these types of themes — war, crime, etc. — are so popular amongst developers for the simple fact that they're already proven. "As much as we are about pioneering certain aspects, one of the things I learned at EA is that it's never good to have too many pioneering [aspects] in a game because there's certain things that people expect," he said. "The crime genre is proven as a mass market entertainment genre." With three big platforms already tackled, Funzio is now investigating and working on development for the Android platform, though no specifics have been announced. The company is also looking into potentially utilizing new technologies — current games are being developed with Flash — including HTML5. "We are very interested in how HTML5 develops and the potential of the technology," Moledina said. "For us we're not necessarily married to any particular technology. We're much more interested in ways to present pioneering games to the social market." Beyond those two games Funzio doesn't have any announced projects, though Moledina says that the company's future roadmap includes what he describes as "pioneering" social games. We don't know any specifics, but the roadmap helped convince Moledina that Funzio was the right place to be. ""It was one of the most interesting things I'd seen in about a decade in the games industry." Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| The DeanBeat: The critical season for game sales is upon us Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:00 AM PST
The holidays came early for a lot of gamers in November, with releases ranging from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Fortune to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Starting Friday, everybody else will start piling into the gift-buying market as well. In general, the last two months of the year can account for as much as 40 percent of the game industry’s revenues. Black Friday deals will abound as games compete for a share of shoppers’ wallets. Traditionally, the last six weeks of the year have been a critical season for the traditional console game industry, and that is probably the case for the digital game industry as well. This year, U.S. retail game sales have been weak for the first 10 months of the year. Sales grew 1 percent in October but were down 6 percent in September, down 23 percent in August, and down 23 percent in July. Market researcher NPD is forecasting that game sales will get a little boost in the last two months of the 2011, resulting in flat to down 2 percent for the full year. Fortunately, there are other parts of the industry that are providing growth. Those other parts include used games, rentals, online games, mobile games and social games. NPD is always behind in measuring those sectors, but the data from the second quarter showed that the entire game industry, including these sectors, grew 1 percent the second quarter.
Last year, the crowds failed to materialize to buy retail games in the last two months of the year, despite a record launch for Call of Duty Black Ops. Total video game sales in 2010 were $18.58 billion, down 6 percent from $19.7 billion in 2009, according to NPD. The weakness last year was due to hardware revenues, which were down 13 percent. Even with price reductions on game hardware, the market didn’t expand enough to compensate for the lower prices. By comparison, Zynga is now generating a billion dollars a year in revenue for its social games and, based on a survey by Raptr, it is taking time away from time spent playing hardcore games. But as much as digital game sales are taking money out of the pockets of the U.S. game retailers and console game publishers, they are also taking money away from other forms of entertainment. As we noted a year ago, games are becoming one of the biggest forms of entertainment, competing favorably with music and movies as they vie for the attention of old and young, male and female audiences alike. With the vast growth of games such as The Sims Social on Facebook, the notion of being a gamer is becoming as meaningless as a "moviegoer," since everyone's playing. As the console game companies diversify into the digital space — Electronic Arts gets about a quarter of its revenue from digital games — they can also benefit from the expansion of digital gaming, which is doing a much better job of turning non-players into casual gamers on platforms such as the iPhone or Facebook. There are indications that the holidays are also a big season for digital games. For Zynga and Nexon alike, the fourth quarter is always the biggest revenue quarter of the year. The iPhone and iPad game markets usually see a pop around the holidays because kids and adults download and share new games at family gatherings. The mobile game companies are launching their major titles — such as Epic Games’ Infinity Blade 2 title debuting on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 on Dec. 2 — during this season as well. Digital retailers have also learned the same sort of Black Friday deals. Blizzard Entertainment’s online store is selling a packaged version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty for $29.99, or 50 percent off the retail price. But the offer ends Monday, November 28. As just as Black Friday has become a traditional shopping day in the malls, Cyber Monday has become a traditional day for e-commerce, and this year that includes games. By the Christmas holidays, digital game sales can be expected to grow, providing fierce competition not only for packaged game sales at stores but also other forms of entertainment. While it’s hard to figure out if retail games will stay strong, the easiest prediction to make is that the overall game industry will grow in the critical last six weeks of the year. Lastly, I hope you’re having a great Thanksgiving holiday week. Thank you for reading. Filed under: games        
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| Cloud gaming service OnLive offers crazy discounts this Thanksgiving weekend Posted: 25 Nov 2011 07:30 AM PST
Having launched in June 2010, OnLive is attempting to revolutionize the way that games are distributed and played. All OnLive games play instantly on demand over the Internet via a small browser download on almost any PC or Mac, or on a HDTV via the OnLive Game System, with no discs, no big game downloads and no high-performance computer required. As well as offering a place to instantly play the latest games, OnLive provides some unique community features, including a spectator mode, which allows you can watch and comment on hundreds of games being played live. OnLive currently has Android and iOS clients that support this spectator mode, and it is planning on rolling out a full gaming service on these devices this fall, alongside a tablet compatible wireless dual analogue controller. Additional deals will be also be announced on the onlive.com website, as well as on Facebook and Twitter throughout the weekend, featuring dozens of titles from OnLive's comprehensive library of over 175 games, including some of the season's biggest blockbuster titles. If you haven't yet tried the OnLive service, now would seem a great time to do so. Your experience with the service will depend a lot on the quality of your internet connection, but with a no-fee sign up, and hundreds of games available to instantly demo, it is an innovation that is definitely worth checking out. Filed under: games        
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| Amazon Cyber Monday deals: $199 Xbox 360 bundle, $300 Nokia N8, and more Posted: 25 Nov 2011 07:26 AM PST
Amazon just revealed some of its deals for the conveniently made-up holiday, which includes a 250-gigabyte Xbox 360 (with Halo: Reach and and Fable III) for a cool $199, and Nokia’s former flagship phone, the N8, unlocked for just $299.99. Other discounts include a recent 10-megapixel Sony Cybershot model for $199, and a Pentax K-5 DSLR camera for $999. The company revealed that last Cyber Monday was its busiest day last year, with over 13.7 million items ordered at a speedy 158 items per second. It’ll be interesting to see if the same is true this year, since Amazon is also offering some deep discounts for Black Friday. Cyber Monday used to be an easy way to classify e-commerce sales during the Thanksgiving holiday period, but with so many online retailers now offering Black Friday deals, it seems there’s less of a reason to justify another consumer spending orgy. Photo via Scott Akerman Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Over $1K for a virtual spaceship? 2000 Dark Orbit players say ‘yes’ Posted: 25 Nov 2011 06:31 AM PST
Dark Orbit players recently helped demonstrate this whale theory, with 2000 of them each splashing out €1000 ($1335) on a rare virtual space-drone, which can be used to gain a competitive advantage in the game. Whilst some developers shy away from the sale of big game-changing items, preferring to offer premium features with optional subscriptions, Bigpoint are embracing the fact that some players will spend big, in order to improve their performance. Thanks to the four-day space-drone sale, Bigpoint netted a cool €2 million (about $2.67 million) in extra sales revenue. Dark Orbit is a space-based massively multiplayer online game, in which your spaceship can be supported in combat by drones. There are different levels of drone ranking up to the 10th Drone, which is the very rare Zeus Drone. The usual means of obtaining the Zeus drone is to collect all 9 previous drones and then obtain blueprints in order to make it in the game. When Bigpoint put this limited number of Zeus drones up for sale, at a quite staggering price for a virtual item, 2000 players happily stepped forward to pay, in order to circumvent the otherwise arduous task of collecting it legitimately. Bigpoint Games, a German company specializing in browser-based free-to-play online games, was founded in 2002. It is currently on course to deliver over €200 million (about $267 million) in revenue from the sale of virtual goods in its games this year. In April this year, two major private equity firms bought a majority stake in the company for $350 million. With figures like that, it is easy to see why many developers are now looking at the free-to-play model as the best way of monetizing their own games. Filed under: games, offBeat        
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| Peter Molyneux parody account ‘Molydeux’ suspended by Twitter Posted: 24 Nov 2011 06:38 PM PST
The account — which gained over 19,000 followers and cited by many as the funniest account on Twitter — clearly stated that it was not the real deal. It also doesn’t have Twitter’s “verified” seal of authentication. But that hasn’t stopped some people from taking it all too seriously. Molyneux, perhaps best known for creating the Fable series of games, has a reputation for occasional flights of fancy (a.k.a. hyping up a game that sucks) as well as thinking outside the box. The parody Twitter account @petermolydeux was created by an anonymous game developer who previously worked at Molyneux’s studio Lionhead. The account routinely drew on the notoriously eccentric side of Molyneux's character, producing random thoughts and musings such as:
More recently, the person responsible for the fake @petermolydeux Twitter account (we’ll just call him “fake Peter”) began creating videos spoofs of ridiculous prototype games, like a survival horror bowling title. Those may have been a step too far, having since been pulled from YouTube. But we might not have heard the last of fake Peter. As Kotaku reports, fake Peter said he made contact with Lionhead studio, and “their general thoughts regarding the account seem to be positive, but it’s looking like they want me to change the use of the logo in the videos I’ve created, and to make it even more clear in my bio that the account is fake.” Fake Peter also added, “they do actually have people getting in contact asking about the fake prototype videos I’ve created, which I can understand must be frustrating.” (Yes, frustrating and even more hilarious.) Regardless of whether you’re familiar with fake Peter’s work, you should really watch the video message he left for fans on YouTube yesterday (embedded below). As @petermolydeux says himself, “it highlights just how insane the thought of any of this being real actually is.”  Filed under: games, offBeat, VentureBeat        
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| Mapping Black Friday insanity on Twitter (infographic) Posted: 24 Nov 2011 04:34 PM PST
Of course there are plenty of people who don’t care much for Black Friday – avoiding it at all cost due to the massive crowds. However, last year, at least 212 million shoppers did participate to generate an estimated $45 billion in sales. To find out about the type of person who chooses to stand outside a Target parking lot at midnight for a cheap Xbox 360 Kinect game pack (and/or name brand athletic footwear, etc.), social media analysis firm MashWork conducted a study based on Black Friday-related conversations from microblogging social network Twitter. MashWork analyzed over 270,000 tweets referencing Black Friday from Sept. 26 to Nov. 17. The data collected — displayed in the infographic embedded below — yielded answers about what items people were most excited about buying, who they were shopping for and where they plan to make their purchases. Some of the results actually surprised me. For instance, 46 percent of people plan on buying items on Black Friday for themselves, which sort of defeats the purpose of a gift-giving holiday. Also, the study indicated that computers/tablets and expensive basketball athletic shoes (like a pair of Black Air Jordan Cement 3s) were among the most talked about items. As for tablets, MashWork notes that the iPad is the dominant device referenced, despite the launch of competing products from both Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet). “For every 10 times the iPad 2 is talked about in relation to Black Friday, the Kindle Fire is mentioned just once,” the company states in the report. “Shoppers tend to discuss brands on social media that they are engaged and familiar with. Amazon is trusted, but Kindle Fire conversation won't pick up until more people have used it.” Check out MashWork’s Black Friday Twitter infographic below for a visual representation of the data from the firm’s study. Do you plan on taking advantage of Black Friday deals? Let us know in the comments. Also, make sure you check out VentureBeat Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar’s post about the essential Black Friday mobile apps and services for shoppers.
Filed under: gadgets, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| CloudBeat 2011: the final agenda and speaker list Posted: 24 Nov 2011 11:45 AM PST
We’ve been making a lot of noise about CloudBeat 2011, our new cloud event coming up next Wednesday and Thursday just south of San Francisco in Redwood City. And with good reason. Both days are packed with customer-centric case studies, big-name fireside chats, deep-dive breakout sessions, and lots of networking. We’re asking the tough questions to uncover core cloud adoption strategies that companies in all stages are putting in place to better empower employees, serve customers, and deliver tangible value to investors. Please check out the full agenda here. Also part of the program is the Innovation Showdown. 10 companies, chosen from a pool over 70, will battle it out to see whose product/service is leveraging the cloud in the most disruptive way. See the companies here. Finally, the speaker lineup is top-notch. Here’s the list:
We’re expecting 500 industry executives in the room — from the hottest cloud startups and leading cloud providers to the fortune 500 — including a mix of CEO's, CIO's, CTO's, VP's of product development, analysts, investors, marketers, press, and more. There are only a few tickets left. So while you’re recovering from your Thanksgiving feast, grab yours today. Hope to see you next week! We want to thank the industry leaders that are supporting CloudBeat 2011: New Relic as Platinum Sponsor, HP as corporate Sponsor, Sequoia Capital and Scality as Gold Sponsors, Cloudsoft and Trinity Ventures as Silver Sponsors, and Norwest Venture Partners, AppDirect, Aryaka, Box.net, Central Desktop, Egnyte, Equinix, Huddle, Loggly, oneDrum, Private Planet, RedHat and Silicon Valley Bank as Event Sponsors. Filed under: cloud, VentureBeat        
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| TrialBee could save lives by bringing drugs to market faster Posted: 24 Nov 2011 11:08 AM PST
This is the problem that pre-launch startup TrialBee, one of the highlights of Startup Bootcamp Copenhagen’s investor day, aims to solve. Patient recruitment is a key bottleneck in new drug development. Pharma companies often use consultancies called CROs (Clinical research organisations) to recruit trial candidates. These CROs scour for candidates using a network of doctors, research clinics and even print advertising. Using the current methods, 95 percent of respondents don’t match the trial criteria. So one of TrialBee’s first innovations was to pre-screen candidates for a particular trial via their website. Potential candidates will typically find the site via patient organizations and forums and relevant Facebook groups. Candidates search for their particular condition and relevant studies. The pharma company or CRO can provide content about a trial, such as a video explaining the level of commitment required and possible risks. Some trials are highly medically focused and may require lots of time and testing. Others are simpler and only demand a monthly visit to a clinic. TrialBee then pre-screens interested candidates using typical trial criteria like gender, age, BMI and medical history. Pharma companies and CROs that have tested the system have already asked for mobile features. For some conditions, like COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), patients go through successive relapses until they eventually die. New drugs aim to make a relapse less severe. So candidates must not only have the disease but be about to relapse when they start the trial. A combination of manual mental and physical tracking and sensor data aggregated via a mobile phone can be used to detect the start of a relapse and make the trial more effective. Trials related to the big three chronic diseases — diabetes, cancer and heart disease — may make heavy use of mobile technology in the future. So why do people volunteer for drug trials in the first place? “Patients with chronic diseases want access to the new drugs and to contribute to drug development,” says co-founder Jonas Billing. Healthy volunteers tend to be more interested in the money. TrialBee has been running a proof of concept with drug manufacturer AstraZeneca since Q2, 2011. Based on the results so far, that company now estimates TrialBee could save it 1 million EUR ($1.34 million) and 30 days per trial. The first signed customer is CRO Commitum with whom TrialBee will launch in January 2012. I asked TrialBee’s founders why big pharma companies and CROs aren’t already using online methods to recruit candidates. “The Pharma industry is a very conservative industry. They look at the processes they have used before and try to automate them. That doesn’t work. We connect candidates directly to clinical trials,” explains co-founder Tobias Folkesson. Some CROs, such as Quintiles in the U.S., have web platforms, but they are normally limited in terms of geographical reach, and each CRO recruits for it own trial sites only. TrialBee aims to be an aggregator of trials available globally. TrialBee’s business model involves a flat fee of 5,000 EUR ($6,714) to add a trial to the web site and a fee of 2,000-5,000 EUR ($2,685-6,714) per candidate who participates in a trial. The initial target market is Scandanavia and the Baltics but the company expects to expand globally at an aggressive rate. TrialBee was founded in October 2009, has four employees and has raised 145,000 EUR ($193,000) in angel investment from Hampus Jakobsson and others. Startup Bootcamp funded the travel and accommodation required for this story. Filed under: enterprise, VentureBeat        
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| EA finally starts issuing Battlefield 1943 vouchers to PS3 gamers Posted: 24 Nov 2011 10:28 AM PST
After experiencing high level of backlash, including a lawsuit filed against the company, Electronic Arts has finally responded to public pressure by delivering the extra content promised to Playstation 3 owners of Battlefield 3. “There have been some misunderstandings around Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield 3″, EA said in a statement on its website, which also explains what gamers must do to get their downloadable copy of Battlefield 1943. In June, the company announced that PS3 versions of Battlefield 3 would ship with the Playstation Network game Battlefield 1943 on the Blu-ray disc, which didn’t happen. The only explanation for the missing content was sent via a lone tweet from the official @Battlefield Twitter account: "In lieu of 1943 being available on disk for PS3 customers, EA has made all BF3 expansions available early to PS3 customers." As we reported earlier this week, disgruntled PS3 gamers then decided to pursue the matter through legal channels — a move that seems to have nudged EA into action. So, the moral of this particular incident is that sometimes it’s worth complaining when big companies like EA don’t keep their promises. Beginning November 26, European PS3 owners of Battlefield 3 can claim their free, full-game voucher for Battlefield 1943, while U.S. game owners can begin claiming December 10, followed by Asian and Japanese owners December 17. To claim and redeem your game voucher, you’ll need to jump through a few hoops. But, it should be worth the extra effort. With a Metacritic rating of 84, Battlefield 1943 is one of the best PSN games out there. To claim your copy of Battlefield 1943, you will need to follow the steps detailed on the EA.com help pages:
Voucher Input Instructions
Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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Not interested in fighting through crowds today? Then it may just be worth sitting back and waiting for Cyber Monday deals — the online-only version of “Black Friday” — to roll in.
Now that the majority of you have stuffed your bellies with multiple helpings of a delicious Thanksgiving meal, it’s inevitably time to start scoping out deals for 
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