Friskies has already capitalized on the trend by releasing cat-specific tablet games like JitterBug and Tasty Treasures Hunt.

But what’s even better than transcending species lines by watching animals interact with computers? Playing against them. At least that’s the gimmick behind You vs. Cat, the free Friskies game released today. I’m not even a cat person, and I love the idea.

Here’s a March Madness promotion for the game, which has the cat and human square up on opposite sides of an iPad, with the human flinging onscreen objects to try to get past the goal-tending cat:

Update: Here’s another interspecies iPad game from 2010, Cat Cat Revolution, but it seems to be more of a research paper and less of a publicly available game.

Tomorrow, as part of the commitment that AllThingsD has to providing its readers with ever more high-quality content, this site will be launching a new reviews section, All Things Reviewed.

Simply put, we’re building on the consumer-tech reviews by Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret that we’ve always run, with a fresh team of ATD reviewers, the first of whom is the talented Lauren Goode.

Lauren will be joined in the coming months by additional strong reviewers, who we will be adding soon, and each of whom will likely do one meaty review a week.

Katie, who will continue as a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, will also take on the added task of editing the new All Things Reviewed section, which we designed to be bright and graphical and easy to navigate.

We’ll also have plenty of timely, interesting consumer product news in addition to the in-depth reviews. It will all be integrated into the main ATD site, too, because we consider it a key part of providing a range of news, information, analysis and context to those who come to us for trustworthy, fair and accurate journalism.

Make no mistake: We think it is critical that reviews adhere to the same strict tenets of reporting we have for everything we post here. The reviews of the products we will feature take time, rigorous testing and deep critical analysis.

And, like Walt’s and Katie’s current reviews, these new ATD reviews will be based on thorough testing and aimed at smart consumers — and not just techies and enthusiasts.

That’s why we will pick carefully which products are significant or might be interesting to a broader range of readers. In other words, we won’t be reviewing every single slightly changed phone or laptop, or every me-too location app, and we won’t bore you with chip speeds and technobabble.

Thus, as hard as it is to say to the geeks who follow us, we will shun the rigid spec lists and templates used elsewhere, and instead present you with holistic, experience-based reviews that tell the story of the product — hardware, software, apps, games, Web sites and services.

Most importantly, we won’t be afraid to point out negatives, even if the manufacturer is an advertiser. Our aim is to earn your trust and be on your side, even if you disagree at times with our conclusions.

Like all new endeavors, we hope to get the entire section up to cruising speed as soon as possible, but we’ll be doing it in the careful, considered and high-quality manner we strive for in everything we do. (And, like all new stuff, we also had a party introducing the section to a packed crowd at the SXSW Interactive festival last night.)

We hope you’ll like the result and welcome your feedback as we begin our latest expansion. And, as usual, there will be much more to come.

Despite some industry gains from January to February, overall sales totaled $1.06 million last month, down from $1.33 billion year over year; software sales fell 23 percent to $464 million, and hardware sales dropped 18 percent to $381.4 million.

February’s best-selling software title was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, from Activision Blizzard.

While most hardware platforms posted declines year over year, “all current-generation platforms improved sales over January 2012 by more than 50 percent,” NPD said in a note.

A consistent bright spot has been the Microsoft Xbox, which was the best-selling hardware platform for the seventh month in a row. Some 426,000 Xbox units were sold in February, marking the 12th consecutive month Xbox has held more than 40 percent of the current-generation console market share.

And all eyes were on the Sony PlayStation Vita handheld gaming device, which came to market in late February. Only four days of retail sales for the PS Vita were included in this reporting period, but the device gave overall hardware unit sales a month-over-month boost. Not including the PS Vita, hardware unit sales increased by 62 percent over January, NPD said; with PS Vita sales included, the increase was 87 percent.

“More than 1.2 million PS Vita units have been sold globally since launch,” Patrick Seybold, senior director of communications at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in a statement. “Customer satisfaction rates are very high and momentum will continue as gamers get their hands on a deep lineup of blockbuster titles that take advantage of PS Vita’s unique features, including cross-platform play with the PlayStation 3.”

In January, the videogame industry saw a double-digit decline in physical software sales, as my colleague Tricia Duryee reports, following a number of noteworthy game launches ahead of the holiday season.

Here is a very cool — if slightly creepy — video that debuted at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco.

Made by the Paris-based Quantic Dream, developers of the groundbreaking Heavy Rain game, the “Kara” concept video is a look at the future of gaming, using full-body motion capture and a new computer-graphics engine. It is running in real time on Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform.

Mostly, it is just heartbreaking, as a robot comes to life and is quickly scared by the idea of how precious that can be.

Enjoy:

But for those more interested in the postgame highlights and analysis, the inaugural Super Bowl XLVI app from NFL Magazine might do the trick.

The tablet app is meant to be more commemorative than anything else — think of those dust-gathering magazines you collect each year — and it won’t stream the game live.

The app will offer image-rich season recaps for both teams, player highlight reels, polls and Super Bowl history. (No word on whether it includes a slide show of Tom Brady’s hairstyles throughout the years.)

After the game, the app will be updated with 15 to 20 minutes of highlight clips, breakdowns of key plays, interviews with players, NFL.com articles on the game and 360-degree photos.

The video available on the app during and after the game will be “clean” game highlights from NFL Network. Later on, extended highlights from NFL Films, with NBC logos and graphics, will be made available through the app.

The app, which is available on the iPad and on Android tablets, is selling at a pregame discount of $2.99 — which is less than half of the postgame price.

“We’ve seen a lot of fan demand for this,” said Jeff Berman, general manager of NFL Digital Media. “We plan to keep the app fresh for several weeks as we introduce new content, and ultimately provide a kind of lifetime digital keepsake.”

Nielsen data shows that 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smartphone owners use their devices while watching TV, while a poll conducted by Velti and Harris Interactive shows that nearly 60 percent of mobile users plan to look at or use their mobile device during the game. We’ll likely see some interesting data after Sunday, as well, about mobile usage during the Super Bowl. These metrics are key for advertisers as they try to gauge how many eyeballs are on second — and third, and fourth — screens during big television events.

And what about those Super Bowl ads, you ask? NFL Magazine’s Super Bowl app won’t feature any third-party ads this year, but it will include NFL promotions, as well as ads for The Daily, the tablet newspaper owned by News Corp. (which also owns this site), since the NFL is using The Daily’s technology platform to power the app.

Berman said that since this is the first time NFL Digital has done a commemorative Super Bowl app — it’s the NFL’s first tablet-only app, as well — they’re not focused on signing up a bunch of ad partners to start, though it’s a possibility for future versions of the app.

Revenue generation aside, the app means something else for rabid sports fans: The ability to call up key plays on your tablet whenever you feel like watching them. And rewatching them. And showing them to your friends. And discussing the nuances of the plays.

And unlike a commemorative magazine — which, by the way, the NFL will be producing, as well — the app provides an interactive and updatable experience. Look, Ma, moving pictures!

Yahoo actually let me talk with its new CEO Scott Thompson this morning, after the company announced it had hired him as its latest leader.

In an interview, the man who is leaving a job running eBay’s large and lucrative PayPal online payments unit was affable and — dare I say it — seemed very sweet, as well as gung ho on Yahoo’s prospects going forward.

Joking about how he took the job only because eBay and Yahoo are located close by each other in Silicon Valley and the commute was just as easy, Thompson opened by noting that those working at the online commerce giant have always had a “keen appreciation for what each other was doing.”

He said that when he was approached in November about the Yahoo job, although sources said it was just offered this week and took eBay by surprise.

Still, soon after being contacted by Yahoo’s exec recruiters, Thompson said he began “exploring in more detail what’s actually here.” As he did so, he added, he “became progressively more fascinated” that Yahoo had more promise than has been assumed in recent years.

“Its potential is still enormous, but the dialogue has not been about what the company is,” Thompson said. “I want to get this wonderful brand to where it could be again … so, as a starting point, this is a great starting point.”

Thompson’s premise is based on his belief that we are still in the early days of the Internet. And, because he is a Boston native — making him, of course, an ardent fan of its beloved Red Sox — he used baseball as a metaphor.

“It’s early innings, and there are the next eight innings in front of us,” he said, noting that he was in the stands with his father when catcher Carlton Fisk hit that famous game-winning home run in the 12th inning of the sixth game of the World Series in 1975.

Note to everyone who is not an obsessive fan like Thompson (and also, I might add, Walt Mossberg): It did take the Red Sox from 1918 to 2004 to actually finally win the Series again, so maybe Yahoo has a chance!

“This remains a great business, and I have no doubt its best days are ahead of Yahoo,” said Thompson, in that same hopeful spirit of this-year’s-gonna-be-the-one.

Thompson noted that he is fully cognizant of the major troubles at the company recently, and had a “real sense of urgency, but not by moving at breakneck speed, because you just do bad stuff faster.”

Instead, he said, he hopes to focus Yahoo the same way he did PayPal, by innovating, making commitments and keeping them, and overperforming.

None are easy tasks, and all have stymied Yahoo in the recent past. Thompson said that he thinks it might be because of not focusing equally on both consumers and Yahoo’s partners and advertisers.

He admitted that his lack of advertising experience was clear — it could be problematic, because it’s Yahoo’s biggest business — but said, “I readily admit what I don’t know, and am ready to learn and rely on Yahoo’s great team.”

While he would not go into deep specifics — Thompson does not start until next week — he said he planned to get some basic grounding, noting, “I have no preconceived notions.”

One thing is clear, said Thompson: “I can assure you I am going to be completely different.”

If that means doing what Fisk did, that would certainly be a home run for Yahoo.

According to the expected year-end box-office data figures compiled by Hollywood.com, the industry raked in $10.1 billion for 2011 in North America.

While that seems like a nice haul, it’s 4.5 percent less than in 2010. While not enough to result a major downturn in limo-riding and Botox, the results are likely to cause entertainment moguls some worry, since they are accompanied by continuing trends, including another year of lower attendance.

And given that the revenue was unusually bolstered by more higher-priced 3-D movie-ticket prices — Hollywood released several dozen 3-D films in 2011, double the previous year’s amount — the latest numbers are even more disappointing.

While some holiday movies did well — namely “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which has taken in about $70 million domestically since its opening less than two weeks ago — it pales in comparison to such digital hits as Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 videogame, which pulled in $400 million in one day from the much-desired youth market.

It surpassed $1 billion in sales in 16 days, eclipsing the box office of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

Does that mean that the continued competition for the leisure time of pretty much everyone between digital and analog has gotten worse — an epic battle of the movie industry versus game players, tablets and smartphones?

Or is it because so many movies made in 2011 turned out to be just awful? (If you saw “New Year’s Eve,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

One thing is clear: No one is going to pay for poor-quality content, no matter the screen size.

More number-crunching to come, as the industry debates the issue into 2012 (coincidentally, the title of a movie I happened to like, as you can see below!), and at the upcoming D: Dive Into Media at the end of the month, down near Los Angeles, in the belly of the Web-smacked beast.

Until then, let’s hope it does not come to this next year:

In it, WSJ.com’s Markets Hub host Paul Vigna asked the (largely offscreen) media mogul some questions about online stuff, as the other two (terrified-looking) panelists watched.

What about buying into online gaming giant Zynga’s upcoming IPO? “No,” gruffed Murdoch. Does he play its flagship game, FarmVille? Of course not.

Murdoch is apparently on Facebook, though. Well, could Vigna be besties with his ultimate boss (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns The Wall Street Journal, which owns WSJ.com, which also owns AllThingsD.com) on the social networking giant?

“No,” growled Murdoch.

Heh.

Two of the more interesting online media properties are apparently joining up for a year-end online idea festival.

The AOL-owned Huffington Post, and TED, the massive conference organization and online site dedicated to its offerings, will jointly feature 18 of the best onstage speeches from TED’s excellent year-round global events.

The idea-thon will be called “Best of TED 2011: A Countdown of 18 Groundbreaking Ideas to Reshape the World in 2012.” A post on the Huffington Post site noted that it will feature the popular TEDTalks and combine them with “new blog posts written by the people who delivered them, examining how their ideas were impacted by being shared with a global audience.”

Out of a total of 300 possible choices, the number of speeches has been narrowed down to 18, because TEDTalks are limited to no more than 18 minutes. The talks range over a wide array of topic areas, including science, art, music, tech and more.

In an interview today, HuffPost majordomo Arianna Huffington said that the aim was to spur thinking around big problems the world faces.

“We are trying to be people to rethink everything in a super engaging way,” she said. “That is what TED is famous for and we wanted to shed a lot of light on it.”

Here’s today’s, with game developer Kevin Slavin on “How Algorithms Shape Our World”:

The game, which launched last Monday, shifts the scene of its company’s hit Facebook franchise to medieval times, following ’Ville themes based on city life, the Wild West (FrontierVille) and farming (FarmVille).

Zynga has declined to provide specific figures for the new launch, citing its quiet period before its upcoming initial public offering. Facebook also declined to comment.

But, according to publicly available information on AppData, players are now flooding CastleVille’s undiscovered lands for the chance to build their very own kingdom.

On its first full day, CastleVille attracted 460,000 players. That easily beats CityVille, the next most recent game in the franchise. On CityVille’s first full day, about a year ago, Zynga said the game attracted 290,000 residents. Prior to that, FrontierVille attracted roughly 116,000 players on its first day of play.

Leading up to to launch, CastleVille had a few shorter play availabilities, but those typically don’t count, since companies often use them for testing, AppData said.

The official numbers, if Zynga reports them, may end up being different, but generally, the figures that are publicly available show that the game is headed in an upward direction.

By the end of the week, the base of players visiting the game on a daily basis had topped 680,000 players.

Still, CastleVille has a long way to go.

CastleVille currently ranks as Zynga’s 18th most popular title; it took CityVille less than a month to hit 69 million monthly active players, about 14 million players a day.

Last week, CastleVille undoubtedly got a lift from “Good Morning America,” which gave the online game a four-minute plug. The show’s tech contributor, Becky Worley, visited Zynga’s San Francisco headquarters, where graphic artists created avatars for the show’s co-hosts, Lara Spencer and Josh Elliot.

“Good Morning America” is also giving away a special CastleVille item to those who “Like” the show on Facebook.

Those promotions are typical –and important — for the game’s launch. Earlier last week, Zynga kicked off a partnership in CityVille to promote Cirque du Soleil’s “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour.”

The big question, of course, is how well the game will continue to do going forward, without such noisy promotions.

In fact, many of Zynga’s older games are propped up by promotions, including one featuring Lady Gaga in FarmVille, and one with Enrique Iglesias in CityVille.

But, as Zynga goes public, investors will look to see if it is capable of building a brand that can attract those millions of players and stand on its own without the costly support of others.

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’ve been following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Sony’s Kazuo Hirai.

Hirai is a key figure at the Japanese consumer electronics giant, which has been struggling to revive itself after dominance turned to years of decline; he is widely considered the second in line to CEO Howard Stringer.

In an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg, the elegant exec, who was a longtime gaming exec at Sony, talked about the next-generation (but delayed) Vita game player, smartphones and Sony’s first Google Android tablets, which are now launching.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/sonys-kazuo-hirai-on-reviving-the-iconic-ce-brand-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111106/meet-kid-robot-kibot-the-full-asiad-demo-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111106/meet-kid-robot-kibot-the-full-asiad-demo-video/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:05:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=140951

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Kibot, a robot for kids.

Besides playing educational games, Kibot from Korea Telecom gives parents another pair of eyes, too, with videochat and remote control.

Kibot — available only in South Korea for now — is aimed at children from three to seven years old. It looks like a monkey, whose nose is an RFID reader, stomach is a control panel and ears are the navigational buttons.

Would that my kids were that easy to control.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111106/meet-kid-robot-kibot-the-full-asiad-demo-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111003/viral-video-liz-gannes-may-or-may-not-see-hubski-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20111003/viral-video-liz-gannes-may-or-may-not-see-hubski-now/#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:34:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=127665

At AllThingsD, we love Liz Gannes too, but not quite as endearing-creepily as Steve Clausnitzer of Hubski, a “thoughtful” social aggregation site, does.

Like a lot of start-ups, he wants our fantastic social reporter to check out his site and possibly write about it. But, unlike others, to entice Liz Clausnitzer has penned a little ditty that he posted on YouTube.

You need to watch it to experience the full oddball effort (although we all agree on her very lovely smile)– but mission accomplished on us noticing you, Steve!

I can make no promises that Liz will cover Hubski, of course.

But she is not alone in the video PR pleas — embedded below is one from June to our commerce reporter Tricia Duryee about a new online game from Sir Mix-A-Lot (who seems to do this sort of thing a lot):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111003/viral-video-liz-gannes-may-or-may-not-see-hubski-now/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/ http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:45:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=123431

Silicon Valley’s Silver Lake and DST Global of Russia, as well as Chinese private equity firm Yunfeng Capital, are leading a $1.6 billion tender offer for privately held employee and shareholder stock of China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources close to the situation.

Yunfeng, by the way, was co-founded by Alibaba Chairman and CEO Jack Ma, as well as other prominent Chinese entrepreneurs.

Along with DST, Silver Lake and Yunfeng, Singapore-based investment firm Temasek is also participating in the tender offer as an investor, but in a smaller way.

The deal, which has been discussed for some time, was signed earlier today and will be presented to its employees in an internal company blog, which will be in Chinese.

To get around persistent foreign ownership issues in China, sources said, DST and Silver Lake are ceding voting control of their stakes to Alibaba management.

If the tender is fully subscribed, that would mean a stake of just under five percent for the group, sources said, and it gives Alibaba a $32 billion enterprise valuation.

The impetus for the tender offer, which begins today, appears to be trying to address a cash-out, paper-rich issue for Alibaba employees.

There are no active secondary private markets in China, as is the case for tech start-ups in the U.S., and there is also no IPO in the foreseeable future for Alibaba. Thus, management has been looking for a way to give its employees and also other shareholders some liquidity.

This tender offer is not a capital raise by Alibaba and is only aimed at eligible employees and shareholders. The purchase of the Alibaba shares is expected to close before the end of December.

It will be done via a special investment vehicle, specifically aimed at this purchase, that includes a spate of investors. Giant Interactive Group, a Chinese online game developer, for example, said it had committed $50 million to the fund.

It’s not clear what the implications are for Alibaba’s biggest shareholder, Yahoo, which sources said is not selling shares in the tender offer. Yahoo’s fully diluted Alibaba 39 percent stake is now worth $12.5 billion in the deal.

That’s discounted due to tax issues and also the inability of the Silicon Valley Internet giant to sell its Alibaba shares.

In other words, investors will likely welcome this higher valuation, but realize a public offering is farther away than ever.

But it is interesting in that it clearly shows a strong relationship between DST and Silver Lake, which have jointly been mulling a possible bid for Yahoo along with Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, as I previously reported.

Some will speculate that Silver Lake and DST now have an in with Alibaba, which is important, since a large slug of Yahoo’s market valuation is due to its Alibaba and also Yahoo Japan! assets.

If Yahoo is sold, of course, the disposition of the Alibaba asset is an important part of the deal.

More to come, including the implications for Ma, who has been under siege of late around his spinning out of Alibaba’s Alipay payments service and the noisy battle that later ensued with Yahoo. Yahoo and Alibaba, as well as its other large shareholder, Japan’s SoftBank, settled that dispute earlier this summer.

His involvement in Yunfeng, which is buying the company’s shares in a special fund that Ma is not in, will likely attract some scrutiny, anyway.

Sources said Ma is a minority investor in Yunfeng itself, has no control rights and is not a director. In addition, Yunfeng has no relationship with Alibaba.

In another interesting twist, Alibaba rival Tencent has close ties with DST’s Internet affiliate that used to share the same name, having invested $300 million last year in the affiliate that holds major Russian Internet properties.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110922/exclusive-dst-silver-lake-and-yunfeng-to-lead-1-6b-tender-offer-aimed-at-alibaba-employees-and-others/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110905/netflix-officially-launches-in-latin-america/ http://allthingsd.com/20110905/netflix-officially-launches-in-latin-america/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:35:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=116929 As has been expected, Netflix has officially launched its online video streaming service in Latin America. In a blog post today, the company said: “By September 12, people throughout the Americas will be able to instantly watch a broad selection of movies and TV shows streaming from Netflix on computers, game consoles like the WII and PS3, and Smart TVs.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110905/netflix-officially-launches-in-latin-america/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110823/wrigley-targets-web-gamers/ http://allthingsd.com/20110823/wrigley-targets-web-gamers/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:00:05 +0000 Julie Jargon http://allthingsd.com/?p=112884 In May, Aaron Allar saw an ad on the Web soliciting “test subjects” for an alternate-reality game, and he soon plunged into a world of pulsing beats and blinking lights, black packages arriving at his door and game clues that unlocked more games.

“This is the first alternate-reality game I’ve played, and I didn’t know what to expect,” the resident of Twentynine Palms, Calif., says. But he and other players he met through the game soon guessed “the test” must be a promotion for a new video game.

Instead, though, the teaser campaign is part of an elaborate marketing plan for Wrigley’s 5 gum. Wrigley introduced the brand in 2007 to try to bring teens and young adults back to chewing gum. The company was acquired by Mars Inc. in 2008.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110823/wrigley-targets-web-gamers/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nintendo-opens-a-crucial-chapter-for-3ds-game-device/ http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nintendo-opens-a-crucial-chapter-for-3ds-game-device/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:40:33 +0000 Juro Osawa and Daisuke Wakabayashi http://allthingsd.com/?p=108896 Nintendo Co.’s decision to slash prices this week on its new 3-D hand-held game device, follows a miscalculation on the machine’s appeal. It also sends a clear message to skittish game developers that the Japanese company is willing to stomach losses on 3DS sales — a strategy usually avoided by Nintendo — to try to widen the device’s appeal.

The success of the price cuts — as deep as 40 percent — will be vital for the company’s prosperity.

“If this price cut doesn’t work, there’s not much more they can do,” said Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110811/nintendo-opens-a-crucial-chapter-for-3ds-game-device/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/ http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:00:45 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://allthingsd.com/?p=108056 “Angry Birds” is flapping from touch screens to big screens, books and toys, testing whether one of the best-known mobile apps can become an entertainment franchise akin to Mickey Mouse and Iron Man.

Finland’s Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the game’s developer, this month will publish the first in a line of books, “Bad Piggies Egg Recipes,” with such fare as egg-salad sandwiches and egg sushi. The title refers to the game’s porcine thieves, who become targets for an enraged group of birds after stealing their eggs.

Next up: Angry Birds in the classroom.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/ http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:15:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=108006

I shall say no more than this: Pretty please watch this video for the Champion Jockey interactive game, which you can play on Microsoft’s Kinect player, if only for the bobbing and weaving dude who demos it.

If only.

I must underscore how much this looks like my high school prom date’s dance stylings, but it’s even better than that, since I could not completely appreciate those at the time.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110808/take-two-swings-to-loss/ http://allthingsd.com/20110808/take-two-swings-to-loss/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:05:43 +0000 Ian Sherr http://allthingsd.com/?p=107337 Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. posted first-quarter results at the low end of its guidance in the latest indication that the videogame industry continues to struggle to connect with consumers in a sputtering economy.

Monthly game sales at brick-and-mortar retail shops have suffered as gamers flocked to both online marketplaces and cheaper games on Web sites such as Facebook and smartphones such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110808/take-two-swings-to-loss/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110803/glu-mobile-acquires-two-developers-as-game-consolidation-heats-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20110803/glu-mobile-acquires-two-developers-as-game-consolidation-heats-up/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:05:45 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=105971 As consolidation heats up in the games industry, Glu Mobile has acquired two game developers to double the capacity of its game studios.

The San Francisco-based company announced the acquisitions — Kirkland, Wash.-based Griptonite Games and Toronto-based Blammo Games — as part of its second-quarter earnings yesterday.

Over the past year or so, Glu has aggressively been trying to reinvent itself as a company that develops free-to-play games for mobile devices with features similar to those found on Facebook. Previously, the company was known for selling feature phone games around the world.

Following several acquisitions in the space — including the agreement by Electronic Arts to purchase PopCap for $750 million, and Zynga’s healthy appetite, which has included purchasing more than one company every month for the past year — Glu has been named as a potential acquisition target.

In this case, it appears to be getting out in front of the trend.

Over the past year, Glu has been fairly successful with such hits as Contract Killer, Bug Village and Gun Bros, mostly on the iPhone and iPad, but also increasingly on Android.

In the earnings call yesterday, Glu’s CFO Eric Ludwig explained that the acquisitions were due in part to Zynga’s competitive threat as the social games giant increases its mobile acquisitions. “Glu already has scale in sales, marketing and G&A function, but we have been capacity constrained in our development studio side,” he said, according to a SeekingAlpha transcript of the call.

Both of the acquisitions were paid for in stock.

Griptonite, which has about 200 employees, has been focused on developing titles for multiple platforms including consoles, Nintendo’s DS and the iPhone, but will switch over to making freemium games this year. Glu issued a total of 6,106,015 shares of common stock for the company, which, based on yesterday’s stock price of $4.60 a share, is close to $28 million.

Blammo Games, which was already developing two titles for Glu as a partner, will receive 1 million shares of stock with the potential to earn up to 3.3 million if it hits certain revenue milestones. Blammo is run by Christopher Locke, who was one of the creators of Smurf’s Village and Zombie Café, two very popular games.

As far as the earnings report, revenues totaled $17.7 million in the second quarter, increasing from $15.9 million in the year-ago period. The company also narrowed its losses to $1.8 million, or 3 cents a share, compared to $3.2 million, or 10 cents a share, in the second quarter of 2010.

For the first time, smartphone revenues from free-to-play games exceeded revenues from its legacy feature-phone business. It said that in the quarter, smartphone revenues totaled $9.4 million to leapfrog feature-phone sales of $8.3 million.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110803/glu-mobile-acquires-two-developers-as-game-consolidation-heats-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110728/viral-video-aliens-sunk-my-battleship/ http://allthingsd.com/20110728/viral-video-aliens-sunk-my-battleship/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:37:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=103476

Okay, Hollywood has apparently made a movie from the classic Hasbro game “Battleship.”

But instead of plastic pegs in a board, it’s chock full of special effects, aliens and a lot of explosions.

Yes, aliens. It’s a long way from B1.

Here’s the teaser trailer:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110728/viral-video-aliens-sunk-my-battleship/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110629/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-a-zynga-ipo-insider-selling-natch/ http://allthingsd.com/20110629/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-a-zynga-ipo-insider-selling-natch/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:07:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=92568

So exactly how fecund is “FarmVille”?

If reports hold, we’ll all find out today what the yield is from the online gaming phenom Zynga, which will finally be filing its regulatory documents sometime today.

The S-1 for a public offering valued at up to $20 billion, which will contain all kinds of juicy information about the San Francisco-based start-up’s business, is likely to come out after the markets close. Zynga is expected to raise $2 billion in the offering.

Before everyone gets to see what’s in it, there’s a lot that investors should be looking out for, based on recent IPO filings by similar companies, such as Groupon.

Digging Up New Accounting Ground

As Tricia Duryee pointed out, Zynga will be the “first major U.S. company supported primarily by the sale of virtual goods” to file.

That’s what will likely make the Zynga filing very interesting, from an accounting point of view.

How Zynga handles its accounting is sure to be much scrutinized, especially since Groupon attracted all kinds of ugly from its unusual treatment of its financial results.

To defocus from its money-losing under GAAP acounting, the Chicago-based social buying service used the more attractive “Adjusted CSOI,” which is defined as adjusted consolidated segment operating income.

My definition: Sketchy!

Zynga’s finances are expected to look better, reportedly generating about $400 million in profit last year on about $850 million in revenue.

It will be important to pay attention to the breakdown of those revenues and about what period of time the company accounts for them.

As Duryee wrote, Zynga has several choices:

Game-based model: The company recognizes revenue over the life of the game.

User-based model: Revenue is recognized over the estimated life a user plays the game.

Item-based model: Revenue is recognized based on the implied or explicit life span of the item — in other words, how long it would last in the real world. Examples of more durable goods are virtual vehicles, furniture or weapons. Revenue from these would be recognized for as long as the player stays active in the game. Revenues from a more consumable item, like a virtual cup of coffee or a jolt of energy, would be recognized almost immediately.

And there are still other factors to take into consideration, such as whether the goods were paid for with virtual currency or real cash, and how much information a company has for establishing the averages.

In the Revenue Weeds

Another interesting thing to study will be the revenue breakdown for Zynga, especially as it relates to its biggest platform provider, Facebook.

Such as: How many in-game items are purchased directly on Facebook versus through gift cards purchased in the store? How big (or small) is Zynga’s advertising business? What about mobile games? Will the profitability of individual games be called out, with details about their performance?

And, of all its various distribution platforms for its games, where does it get the most mojo?

That’s important, since Zynga will be seen as a proxy for Facebook’s business. Thus, a lot of investors might find some nuggets of information, since the pair are so tightly intertwined as businesses.

Facebook, of course, has been famously trying not to IPO, so any indication of the social networking site’s business will be carefully studied.

Reaping the Insider Rewards

Lastly, it’ll be important to see who is selling what and when among current Zynga investors.

Groupon ran into a buzz saw of criticism from the giant payouts its founders took out of the company from its massive venture funding rounds.

As Peter Kafka wrote:

Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it to help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers, including Eric Lefkofsky, and, notably, the Samwer brothers, who sold their CityDeal company to Groupon in 2010 … Of note: This wasn’t the first time Groupon had raised money and taken cash off the table. In April 2010, the company raised $130 million, and handed $120 million to many of the same people.

My definition: Even sketchier!

Along with its founder and CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga investors are the pantheon of venture players, including Digital Sky Technologies, Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures and angel investors LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.

How much Pincus and others inside the company have taken out and are selling should be one of the first places new investors should look.

Because with the hyped valuations that many of these Web 2.0 companies are getting, who’s zooming who should be a key sign to pay mind to.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110629/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-a-zynga-ipo-insider-selling-natch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110606/zyngas-launches-hanging-with-friends-mobile-game/ http://allthingsd.com/20110606/zyngas-launches-hanging-with-friends-mobile-game/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:19:57 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=83535 Social games maker Zynga is launching a new mobile game called Hanging With Friends, which builds off the hit game Words With Friends that it acquired late last year through its purchase of Newtoy. The latest mobile game replicates the game of hangman, much like the first game copied Scrabble. It is available now in Canada on iPhone, and then will roll out more broadly with both free and premium versions.

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