That figure confirms that Nintendo is definitely one of this country’s leading portable gaming manufacturers, but for comparison’s sake, we dug up numbers for the iPod touch, which is likely Apple’s most comparable device, rather than the always-connected iPhone or its larger and more expensive cousin, the iPad.

In a lawsuit, Apple revealed that as of March 2011 it had sold more than 60 million iPod touch devices worldwide since late 2007.

While those aren’t entirely comparable numbers — one is worldwide and the other is only in the U.S. — many are saying that Apple’s products are starting to eat into Nintendo’s traditional base of players. With these figures being so close, and Apple claiming that the iPod touch is the No. 1 portable game player, you can start to see why.

Last month, Nintendo sold more than 260,000 Nintendo 3DS units in the U.S., an increase of more than 10 percent from the previous month, following a much-needed price drop on Aug. 12.

The numbers were part of the NPD Group’s monthly figures, which state the overall health of the videogame industry. Generally, September is a sleepy month, as consumers hold off on making any big purchases and manufacturers delay big launches until the holidays.

The NPD Group said spending on hardware and software in September totaled $1.16 billion, falling 6 percent from the same period a year earlier, when consumers spent $1.23 billion. The sales only represent physical retail sales and do not include digital sales, which are fast becoming a big chunk of the industry.

During the month, software sales were helped out by the newly released Madden NFL by Electronic Arts, which was the top selling-game during the month.

Of course, higher quality means bigger budgets.

To that end, the San Francisco company is announcing today that it has raised $10 million in a second round of capital.

The investment comes from Idle co-founder Rick Thompson, the former chairman and co-founder of Playdom, the social games company Disney acquired last year. Thompson previously led Idle’s initial round of $9 million.

In a recent interview with Thompson, he told me, “I think developers are having to retire old practices and will have to provide experiences that people do enjoy. What I am saying is that the bar is being raised and the established players are having a harder time reacting to the environment, and it’s hard to let go of that. The innovation is coming from emerging players.”

But even the established companies are starting to see that players on Facebook are becoming more discerning.

Zynga announced on Tuesday that its upcoming release on Facebook, called CastleVille, will be one of the first social games to have music recorded from an orchestra, which is more typical of console productions.

Today, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee is scheduled to visit Idle Games’ new 36,000-square-foot offices as part of a campaign to increase the number of tech jobs in the city.

Jeff Hyman, Idle Games’ CEO and co-founder, said in a release, “We believe that Facebook games will only thrive by delivering the highest quality entertainment experience to users. That’s why we’re taking a new approach to Facebook game design with an emphasis on delivering a truly social experience, while raising the bar for creativity, quality and innovation.”

The company’s first game, Idle Worship, will launch soon. In the game, you are a god vying for the worship of friends, strangers and the indigenous population of Mudlings. The game will allow players to play synchronously, meaning that you’ll be playing together with friends in real time.

For a peek at what they consider quality, watch this trailer:

That’s a fact.

But a new study conducted by Flurry, an analytics provider for mobile games on Apple and Android devices, provides a fairly compelling argument as to why a developer should continue to give away his or her games for free.

Ultimately, it’s because consumers are willing to pay much, much more — if given the option.

After evaluating the spending habits of 3.5 million consumers across both iOS and Android, Flurry found that among those who pay for in-app transactions, greater than five percent will spend more than $50, which rivals the amount paid at retail for top console and PC games.

What’s more, consumers are spending $14 per transaction on average, which easily exceeds the price tag of most premium games being sold on smartphones today.

Since $14 sounds high, Flurry’s GM of Games Jeferson Valadares explains the logic behind it in a blog post today. The findings are also a continuation of a report issued earlier this month that generically found that mobile games generate more revenue if given away for free.

Valadares explains that only three percent of consumers are likely to spend money at all, but that at the high end, there are some very big spenders who are bringing up the average and generate a bulk of the revenue. Additionally, the number of consumers who pay very little remains fairly low. In fact, consumers spend only 99 cents less than two percent of the time.

“Why then would so few consumers spend just $1 in freemium games when this price point is so popular among premium games?” Valadares writes. “Because freemium games drive a different decision-making mindset for consumers. They simply are deciding whether or not to spend.”

The study found that 71 percent of all transactions are for amounts under $10; 15 percent are for spends between $10 and $20; and 13 percent are for amounts greater than $20.

The higher-end buyers are considered the “whales” of the industry.

Flurry’s advice to game developers is to focus on the whales: “If you’re a game designer, your main take away is that very few transactions — and consumers who complete those transactions — make up the bulk of your revenue. Therefore, your ‘meta-game’ should be about whale hunting.”

Here’s the first part of my interview with Nintendo’s Global President Satoru Iwata from E3, where he discusses — through an interpreter —  the successor to the original Wii, called the Wii U.

He not only tells me that the devices have higher-end components, capable of displaying hardcore games, but that the controller’s 6.2-inch display will attract a very wide audience of people looking for a casual way to connect to the Internet.

Stay tuned for the second part of the interview, where Iwata explains why Nintendo will continue charging for its games and not get caught up in the the frenzy to release free-to-play games. (Update: Here is a link to the rest of the interview.)

Let’s get started by talking about the Wii U. What does it accomplish for the company?

We consider the Wii U the next step for the Wii … By that I mean, the mission this time is that we would like to transform the relationships between the family, the video game and the Internet into a new shape. Many things can be changed with the introduction of the Wii U into the household, especially how video games want to be played, how people are going to watch TV, and how the relationship with the Internet and family members will be changed.

The Wii U represents a big shift from casual and family-friendly gaming that Nintendo is known for to hardcore gaming and first-person shooters.

In the case of the original Wii, our intent was to extend the gaming population, but of course we needed to think about how we were going to motivate non-gamers to play with video games, so we came up with Wii Sports and Wii Fit, as well as how the Wii system was designed.

For example, in the case of our products, approximately 50 percent of our users are a female audience, the other platforms are around 30 percent.

So, the Wii has already achieved very impressive things, but there were two things we were not able to realize: We could not keep up with the hardcore gamers and the Wii original was not compatible with HDTVs.

This time around, Wii U is compatible with HDTV, so we now expect the Wii console to be as powerful as any other console and all the necessary buttons are there [Iwata holds the new controller and demonstrates its use].

When we approached the third-party publishers to tell them about the Wii U, all the publishers volunteered to make advancements in the field of shooting games that they are very good at. For example, ordinarily when you are playing a shooter type of game, your main TV screen is the battlefield; however, oftentimes you have to open a new window to select items or weapons or to see the entire map.

But you don’t have to do that anymore with Wii U because you’ll have a screen that will show you that information.

But this is just one of the roles. It will also have another mission, as well. By having another screen, we believe it will pave a new way in the opposite direction to attract the non-gamers today. It’s no denying that we’ve expanded the so-called gaming population, but there’s still a number of people that have yet to be interested in the Wii at all, even after we introduced them to such applications as Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

Even those people, we want them to utilize Wii U one way or another.

For example, there’s video chat or they may want to do Web browsing while watching the screen on the big TV and managing operations with the screen in your hands.

For the past decade or so, many attempts have been made to link the TV and the Internet, but so far, nothing has been popular. So, the PC is still the strongest device to take advantage of the Internet, and now increasingly smartphones and tablets.

The ordinary TV sets in the household are located 10 feet away from yourself, and so it’s not the optimal solution to see the small letters of the Internet. You may also have problems with inputing and browsing.

On the other hand, when you look at this controller, it’s one foot away from your eyes — it has almost the same distance of the PC and other smartphones. In other words, this device is capable of handling such activities for you to input the letters in the palm of your hands.

In the future, if the TV and Internet can be used together, the TV will have a remote with a screen — and it will look very similar to how the Wii U controller is today.

So, the Wii U is the TV remote of the future?

Yes.

While on one hand we are trying to reach out to the hardcore gamers, we are also trying to make something that can be used as the TV remote of the future. The point is we are trying to reach out to both directions at the same time with the Wii U.

So, do you see the audience continuing to be 50 percent women?

A number of the videogame genres will be for male audiences, and the male audiences will increase, but on the other hand, this device is capable of many other things. On this device you can see video streams of Netflix, or you can use in conjunction with the TV. Regardless of the gender, you may want to use it … Our hope is it will be equal number of males and females who will be interested in this device.

After you announced the Wii U, I wrote that you are competing for time spent on the living room couch — whether someone is using their laptop, or using a tablet to Skype, or playing a game on the phone. Is this a response to trying to take couch time back?

I think it’s an accurate and acute insight into the situation.

Our mission is to try to shorten the distance between people and gaming, and in order to do so we tried to remove any possible barriers. If you like to play console games, you have to do so on the TV and you have to change the TV’s input and other things. We wanted to remove even these barriers. One of the ways to take advantage of that is to get access to some game-related information [on the Wii U's tablet]. It’s competition for couch time.

Once again, even though, we used a system that caters to the needs of the most skillful players, we are also trying to reach out to the people who are not interested in video games.

I think that we have been able to reduce a number of issues with this.

Because the Wii U can always be on?

Yes.

Photo Credit: Nintendo.

More From E3

• At E3, Xbox Lets Kinect Lead the Charge on Gaming, Live TV Ambitions
• Justin.tv Broadcasts Gamers’ Every Move on TwitchTV
• Who Needs War? Sparks Will Fly in EA’s New Sims Game for Facebook.
• Sony Unveils Vita Gaming Device at E3; Will Launch This Year for $249
• E3: Nintendo Unveils the Wii U With Tablet-Style Controller
• Three Key Takeaways From Nintendo’s Wii U (Plus Photos!)
• No Hacks to Report at Xbox, But Microsoft Isn’t Letting Its Guard Down
• Forget About 99 Cents, What If You Could Rent Mobile Games for 25 Cents?
• Digital Game Revenues Hit $5.9 Billion in 2010

For game players, it’s the equivalent of traveling in Europe before the Euro.

Even if you are playing the same game by the same company, players must buy a different set of currencies when moving between Facebook, iTunes and the consoles. The hurdle is significant given that the free-to-play model is considered a good chunk of the industry’s future.

But there are signs that a pact is forming, even if it’s at a very unofficial level.

Chris Early, Ubisoft’s VP of Digital Publishing, told me the night before E3 kicks off that both Facebook and Apple have agreed to honor currency purchased on each other’s platforms for the same game. The one condition is that it costs the same for the consumer on every platform.

Early said we’ll likely see this first for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, which he tells me is being released over the next years on multiple platforms, including Facebook, mobile, console and the Internet.

The new pact means that if a customer purchased $20 worth of Ghost Recon Credits on Facebook, Facebook would still earn its 30 percent cut of the revenue, but players would be able to access the points in the Ghost Recon game on Apple devices. The reverse is true as well. Ghost Recon does not yet support micropayments on the console, so it would not use credits purchased elsewhere.

Early said Ubisoft will be responsible for managing a player’s current balance across all the platforms.

GameStop, which has more than 6,000 physical locations, said today its digital revenues jumped 53 percent in the first quarter, compared to the year-ago period. Additionally, it’s on track to hit $450 million in digital revenues this year and $1.5 billion by 2014.

In an interview, GameStop’s President Tony Bartel and CEO Paul Raines explained that they see three sources of digital revenues: mobile; downloadable content to the console; and PC, which includes downloads and point cards for social games, as well as advertising.

To aid in its expansion to digital, GameStop has made a handful of recent acquisitions, of which two have yet to be completed. The acquisition of Spawn Labs will allow it to provide a cloud-based streaming game service–similar to OnLive–and Impulse will allow it to compete with Steam, a streaming service on the PC side.

Bartel said all three areas of digital are growing, but perhaps the fastest is downloadable content for the console, which they are projecting will become a $6.3 billion business in 2014.

He said all of the major game publishers are developing downloadable content that can be sold as add-ons to their packaged goods business, which creates a steady, recurring revenue stream.

Overall, what the two execs said they are seeing is an expansion in the number of people playing games–in other words, digital is not cannibalizing console. In addition to the 100 million homes that have an Xbox, a Wii or a PlayStation, increasingly consumers are playing games on their computer, smartphone or tablet.

The company’s stock reacted positively to the report, nearly hitting a 52-week high after increasing 64 cents, or 2.4 percent, to close at $27.32 a share.

Both its traditional physical-store business and its digital initiatives continue to grow.

“The important thing to know is that we are actually making the market bigger for gaming. We think gaming is a net positive growth activity,” Raines said.

Overall, the company reported a first quarter profit today of $80.4 million, or 56 cents a share, on revenues of $2.28 billion. Profits were up 6.9 percent and revenues were up 9.5 percent compared to the same period a year earlier.

In addition to digital, GameStop also contributed its strong performance, in part, to the launch of Nintendo’s 3DS.

Nintendo said it sold 400,000 3-D handheld game units during its first week in the U.S., but since then sales have lagged. In the first full month the device was for sale, it sold less than 200,000, according to NPD Group.

GameStop said it has roughly a 45 percent market share on 3DS sales, but that it has lower expectations for how the Nintendo product will perform in the current quarter.

According to NPD Group, Nintendo sold more than 620,000 hardware units in the U.S. in April. This includes more than 257,000 units in the Nintendo DS family, and only 194,000 Nintendo 3DS units. Nintendo also sold more than 172,000 Wii consoles.

Nintendo attributed the gap between the two handheld game units to the staying power of the original DS family–and avoided any implications that the 3DS was not selling well.

“With a rich library of games, Nintendo DS has something for everyone. The system’s staying power is exemplified by the recent launch of the Pokémon Black Version and Pokémon White Version games,” Nintendo said. Those two games sold an impressive 2.8 million units or more combined during their first 60 days of availability.

After the 3DS went on sale March 27, Nintendo was eager to report that the glasses-free 3-D device broke sales records. However, the original DS still appears to be benefiting from having a deeper catalog of games available for sale. Additionally, sales may have been hurt by concerns of younger players viewing 3-D images over long periods of time, or complaints that 3-D images made people dizzy, or gave them headaches.

Overall, NPD Group said that the videogame industry saw very strong sales for hardware, software and accessories in April, compared to the year-ago period.

NPD’s Anita Frazier wrote that all three categories experienced double-digit dollar growth compared to April 2010, reversing a negative downward trend.

“Easter purchasing occurred in April this year as opposed to March last year,” Frazier wrote. “The Easter timing shift could explain about $60 million of the growth, but even accounting for that shift, sales of new physical product realized a notable increase versus last year.”

Hardware sales were strong across the board with the PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 platforms all seeing an increase in unit sales versus April last year. The Xbox 360 platform was the best-selling device of the month in terms of unit sales, followed by the Nintendo DS.

Software performed even better in April. It was the first month that new physical retail sales of content showed growth in both units and dollars since November of last year.

It argued that instead of creating hits that are sold on store shelves for videogame consoles, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company wants to take popular franchises, like Madden or Need for Speed, and digitally distribute them across a number of platforms, such as mobile, social and PC, to create recurring revenue streams.

Riccitiello was unwavering in his commitment:

“The consumer has changed. 200 million console players have become 1.5 billion consumers gaming on multiple devices,” he said. “Today, we are a very different company….From here, it is about building a better, more predictable, and more profitable business, a business that is less dependent on individual hits and more deeply anchored in the ongoing monetization of game franchises.”

But the big question is whether EA can turn the ship when there are 8,000 employees on it who are used to doing business the old way.

Habits are hard to break, especially when it requires replacing a controller with a mouse or a touchscreen. In the meantime, some of its more nimble competitors are getting most of the credit as the industry shifts to digital.

For example, earlier this year, we watched as the private market valuation of Zynga–EA’s much smaller and younger competitor–exceeded EA’s public market valuation. Zynga was reportedly worth between $7 and $9 billion, while EA was valued at roughly $6 billion.

Today, EA’s market cap stands at about $7.25 billion.

Zynga, which makes such Facebook games as FarmVille and CityVille and has dabbled in mobile games, reportedly had revenues of $850 million in 2010. In comparison, EA’s digital revenues totaled $833 million for its fiscal year 2011. (Meanwhile, its overall revenues totaled much more, or $3.6 billion.)

Still, smaller competitors, such as Zynga, which strictly make money from digital revenues, are viewed as not having a lot of baggage and can go hard after something new without sacrificing the old.

Just last week, there was a sign that EA wasn’t winning that battle–even internally.

Electronic Arts disclosed that its COO John Schappert resigned. Rumors indicated that he was joining Zynga, although Zynga has not confirmed the appointment.

Despite that potential set-back, and EA’s public perception, it has been trying.

It has been on an acquisition spree for the past couple of years, picking up everything from Playfish, a social-games developer, to Chillingo, a mobile-games publisher. Earlier this week, it bought a small mobile-games studio called Firemint. (Of course, those investments also become a curse because they have to start paying off.)

Beyond acquisitions, it has also re-prioritized the work it was doing.

On the call, Riccitiello said that involved paring back the number of titles it was making from roughly 70 to around 20. While that was something of a defensive move, he said they are now shifting to offense, by picking the game franchises they do decide to build and porting them across several platforms to increase their profitability. “Over the coming years, we will transform EA from a packaged goods company to a fully integrated digital entertainment company.”

He calls it the “games-as-a-service” model, which is comparable to the software industry switching from a licensed packaged goods model to SAAS, or software as a service, several years ago.

Under this philosophy, he said, they will rely on intellectual property and strong brands, such as EA sports and Hasbro, and build out a platform of registered users that can be marketed to (in Q4, it had 112 million users, roughly twice as many from a year ago). It’s also making managers experts across mobile, social and console, rather than making silos for each category.

“It’s a big change,” Riccitiello said. “As an investor, you can see this as a way to better manage our IP, and drive up the ARPU for our core properties.”

At least one analyst was reluctant to believe the transformation could take place. How does Riccitiello plan to get everyone on board?

“If only you could spend a couple of weeks with us,” Riccitiello joked.

His more serious answer was that they’ve spent the past three years conducting a managerial change: “We’ve identified intellectual property owners inside of our company, and we’re sort of organizing around that.” Those individuals are charged with plans that involve console, PC, mobile, social and a variety of business models, including microtransactions and subscriptions.

The change will be relatively slow. This year the company is projecting digital revenues to total $1 billion, increasing roughly 20 percent over 2011.

And despite all of its efforts, the company will face other challenges, including some that are out of its control. For instance, the company’s EA Sports business is facing two potential league lockouts and this year there won’t be a FIFA World Cup title. Those three things represent roughly a $250 million revenue gap.

It’s also launching its biggest launch campaign for a game in EA’s history for Battlefield 3, and it’s unclear when the highly anticipated launch of Star Wars, an online multi-player game, will occur. Depending on when it is ready, EA’s earnings per share could fluctuate by 15 cents.

Overall, at least some people were sold on the picture Riccitiello painted.

The company’s stock increased a modest $1.76 a share yesterday, or roughly 8.8 percent, to close at $21.68. And Piper Jaffray analysts raised their price target on EA’s shares from $19.50 to $25.00.

The two-day event was held in Beverly Hills, Calif., and heavyweights from Sony, Electronic Arts and dozens of other companies that operate within and around the gaming space met with industry analysts for serious powwow about payment models, digital distribution and social media. The latter was the dominant topic in many of the panels—notably discussing Facebook as a gaming platform.

A trio of analysts prefaced the conference with a trend report. Each drew interesting points including a prediction of death for game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation. Like in the music industry, the digital delivery of games and online play is expected to eventually overtake the sales of physical products.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Madden, who shares no relation to EA’s top-selling NFL title, was most recently WildTangent’s EVP of sales and marketing. In his new role, he will head up advertising across all of EA’s properties, including console, online, mobile and social gaming.

“There’s a lot of free content being monetized through in-game transactions. That’s the perfect playground for advertisers to add value,” he said.

At EA, his focus will be on figuring out a way for advertisers to easily participate in a way that scales–across all the various platforms–and leverages their video and other Flash assets.

Madden, who continues to own stock in Redmond, Wash.-based WildTangent, said his decision to leave was the next logical move for his career. He will now be based in Los Angeles. The Global Marketing team has 50 employees.

In his absence, WildTangent, which operates a game platform on PCs, has promoted Bill Clifford to the position of SVP and general manager of WildTangent Media.

The Japanese videogame maker said its net profit for the fiscal year ended March 31 was ¥77.62 billion ($944.5 million), down 66 percent from the year-earlier ¥228.64 billion. Revenue was down 29 percent to ¥1.014 trillion while operating profit was off 52 percent to ¥171.08 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a net profit of ¥142.41 billion and revenue of ¥1.079.

Nintendo also said it plans in 2012 to launch a home console to replace the Wii, which has sold 86 million units since its 2006 debut. The company said it plans to show a working model at June’s E3 Expo in Los Angeles.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

As just one example of the scope of Facebook’s influence, the 18,000 attendees, who have hundreds of sessions and panels to pick from over five days, will be subjected to listening to 12 employees of Zynga, the Facebook superstar, on 15 different panels. (Brian Reynolds, Zynga’s chief game designer, appears three times, while a search reveals no Facebook employees on the roster.).

Two other elements will serve as a backdrop to the event.

Apple will hold its much-anticipated event on Wednesday, where it’s likely to unveil a new version of its hugely successful iPad, according to BoomTown’s Kara Swisher. The tech giant undoubtedly is becoming one of the dominant portable gaming giants, as the iPad and iPhone easily replace the need for dedicated gaming devices.

No need for Apple to attend GDC, however, when the unveiling will occur across the street at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. So subtle.

Meanwhile, the GDC is commemorating its own 25th gaming conference by featuring a keynote by Nintendo.

But can you believe the company, which doesn’t have a new gaming console even on the horizon, is the one talking about the past 25 years and not what the future has in store?

Other companies with a significant presence include Sony, which will be showing off the new Experia Play phone and its motion-activated Move technology, Electronic Arts and independent mobile-game makers like Rovio, of Angry Birds fame.

However, with social being one of the main ingredients on the menu, we caught up with Alex St. John, a long-time executive in the industry, who has spent the past year and a half coming up with an alternative– he calls it the “anti-social networking platform.”

St. John is the president and chief technology officer of Hi5, which was founded in 2003 as a competitor to Facebook’s social network. With all hope lost on that front, it’s now going up against the company a second time–this time for its games business.

The move is 100 percent anti-Facebook, and there’s nothing subtle about it.

Over the past year and a half, St. John has been building an alternative for social-game developers who fear they may be relying too much on Facebook.

Today, Facebook claims 30 percent of most revenues made within a game by mandating the use of its own virtual currency, called Facebook Credits. Developers often hand over even more money to the social network in order to advertise and draw an audience to their games.

St. John’s ambitions are unnaturally large, and supercharged by the fact that he was able to skyrocket his last company, WildTangent, into the largest casual games network (above Yahoo), where it continues to stand today. (Read our story on WildTangent for background.)

Even more boldly, he’s promising to double or triple the amount of revenues a developer can make when using Hi5 compared versus Facebook.

Here’s the logic:

“If I have the same content, and have better monetization, even if my audience is tiny, I will eventually win because I can buy traffic cheaper than you.”

If you buy that, listen to his two-part plan.

First, there’s SocioPath.

SocioPath (the anti-social network) will enable game developers to provide a home for their games outside of the walls of Facebook.

By using it, they can create a unique URL for the game, and users won’t have to register. To do this, Hi5 clones Facebook’s APIs, and enables users to create profiles on the fly, so they can play with other people immediately. The caveat is that if the gamers want to chat or communicate with others, they’ll have to log in and register.

Otherwise, the auto-registration process creates little to no friction for playing.

Second, there’s SocioPay.

SocioPay offers game-makers a way to monetize. It uses a hybrid of advertising and commerce, a practice St. John mastered at WildTangent (for the record, St. John no longer has any role at WildTangent and doesn’t own any stock).

This model allows developers to continue to sell virtual goods to the three percent of users who are traditionally willing to pay in games, but still monetize the other 97 percent using advertising.

When a user clicks on a virtual good, Hi5 will automatically serve a 15-second video clip. If a user would rather pay, they can skip the ad and enter their payment information.

St. John claims you end up losing about 25 percent of sales because of the ads, but you gain way more in revenue through advertising. Over time, they’ll tweak the ad server, so it knows not to offer an ad if a person has already paid for coins or is likely to. His calculations point to a 200 percent–maybe 300 percent–jump in revenue.

Of course, this isn’t free.

Hi5 will charge developers who want to use SocioPay 30 percent of both commerce and advertising revenues. If the ad server is used anywhere else, like on an individual Web site, the developer can keep 100 percent of the revenues. St. John claims the terms are less onerous than those of Facebook, which takes 30 percent of virtual goods and charges additionally for advertising on the site.

When SocioPath launched in August, it had three social games. It is now live with 116, and launching two to five a week.

This week, for instance, SocioPay launches with five partners–Portalarium: Port Casino Poker; DJArts Games: Bush Whacker; Mososh: Chronicles of Herenvale; Game Insight: Resort World;, and Hit Point Studios: Gunbros.

St. John expects the program to go live in a month after the beta is completed.

Here’s a video of St. John, discussing the the trends of GDC, his decision to join Hi5, and his ambitions for the new game venture (to be a very successful No. 2 behind Facebook).