Zynga is laying off 18 percent of its workforce — which represents 520 employees — in a bid to reduce costs and more drastically restructure its troubled business toward mobile, according to sources close to the situation.

The move today will affect every part of the San Francisco social gaming company and cut $80 million in staff expenses. Zynga currently has about 2,900 workers.

But the action will also include the closing of its offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, as well as the slashing of other major infrastructure costs, adding to a total reduction that is likely to be much larger.

Zynga continues to have big offices in San Francisco; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India, as well as several small units across the U.S. (such as Seattle and San Diego).

Sources said that severance benefits will extend for several months and include some acceleration of stock options.

(Update: Zynga has halted trading on the Nasdaq stock market pending news.)

(Second update: Zynga confirmed layoffs and cost cuts, noting they will complete them by August.)

The reason? Mobile — a business Zynga must conquer, despite its currently smaller prospects for monetization compared to its Web business.

After a rocky IPO and trying to cope with rapid changes in its core businesses, Zynga now must refocus the company’s flagship franchises and network on the shift to mobile and a narrowing of focus at the company.

In other parlance, this is a “right-sizing” of Zynga to reflect a more somber reality that these mobile businesses are not as large as its Web-based one that rode the startup to glory on the explosive growth of social networks, primarily Facebook.

Sources said the reason for the more substantive cuts now, after earlier ones last fall, is because the decline of its Web business has been more drastic than anticipated, while the rise of its mobile business has been slower than needed. That’s been especially true on Facebook, which was once one of Zynga’s key money-making partners.

It has resulted in a perfect storm of trouble for Zynga, which has struggled with its business since its public offering, as investors have scrutinized the longevity of the hits-based online gaming business. Despite the continued strength of some of its big properties, such as FarmVille, the life cycle of most casual games has been short.

Zynga has tried to fix the situation by moving to the faster-growing mobile space. In addition, CEO and founder Mark Pincus has tried to solidify its top management, as well as bring in more board help, to strengthen efforts to revive the company.

Zynga has already been on the cost-cutting path, closing less successful games and other more ambitious products that had enjoyed less than expected traction. For example, the company has “sunsetted” 18 games in recent months, as it has deployed more resources and development to mobile efforts.

If Kendall has his way, drunk college students — and drunk college nostalgists like Will Ferrell’s character from “Old School” — won’t be the only ones who go “streaking in the quad.”

Quadstreaker is a location app based not around nudity (though levels in the game are called “bare,” “undercover,” “commando,” etc.), but around connecting real-world “streaks” by physically visiting square areas on a map grid.

The point is to go lots of places in order to fill in your own world map and compete against friends.

An iPhone app made by a bootstrapped five-person startup from Seattle, Quadstreaker runs passively in the background, monitoring location at all times while trying not to draw on the battery too much (similar to the Moves activity tracker and social discovery app Highlight).

Unlike Foursquare, Quadstreaker doesn’t map the world by venues, but rather by these “quads” of location. And it’s a game, where each player’s tracked travels to date are displayed on a shareable “Lifeboard.” (But the location-based gameplay is nothing as complicated as Google’s Ingress.)

“I’ve designed Quadstreaker for me and people like me: Explorer-achievers who like maps, collecting — and a sense of completion,” Kendall explained.

Here’s Will Ferrell’s “We’re going streaking through the quad!” bit:

And here’s a demo video of the Quadstreaker app:

introducing quadstreaker from quadstreaker on Vimeo.

The Boggle-inspired game, available for iOS and Android, is the first self-published title from Swedish studio MAG Interactive. The numbers behind its growth are seriously impressive, but data obtained by AllThingsD suggests that, like last year’s mobile sensation, Draw Something, its popularity may have already peaked.

For the uninitiated, the game works like this: Two competing players each have three minutes to swipe their fingers across a square grid of letters, finding as many words as they can and scoring points in the process. Each game is divided into three rounds, and each round ends with the ominous, perfectly calculated sound of a tick-tick-ticking 10-second countdown.

First, the good numbers: Ruzzle product manager Daniel Hasselberg said more than 100 million rounds (so, more than 33.3 million games) are played every day. With 28 million active users in January, the game has topped the iOS App Store charts in 30 countries.

Ruzzle players have spent, in aggregate, more than 10,000 years playing the game, Hasselberg added.

And according to mobile intelligence service Onavo — which uses anonymous user data from its popular data-compression app to estimate apps’ market share — 7.51 percent of all iPhones in the U.S. opened the game in January, up from 1.29 percent just one month before.

To put that in perspective: The original Angry Birds, which Onavo ranks as the most popular in the series, was opened by “only” 4 percent of American iPhone owners in the same month.

However, Onavo now says that those January numbers may have been the peak for users’ engagement with the app. Although it is still handily beating Zynga’s similar Boggle-esque title, Scramble With Friends, the number of Ruzzle’s daily active users has dropped consistently since the first week of February.

The second graph in the image below shows the trend. The purple line represents Ruzzle, and the gray line represents Scramble With Friends.

Of course, it’s still possible for the developers to turn that curve around, and Hasselberg promised new features for the iOS and Android versions of the game “over the next few months.”

But just two days after Ruzzle peaked, on February 5, MAG Interactive released a new game called QuizCross that’s already bringing in rave user reviews. Despite its youth, the company seems to understand the M.O. of mobile: Like Ruzzle’s ticking countdown, hits don’t last forever.

While not all of the details are known yet, over the past week there have been advance reports and much speculation about what the “PlayStation 4” will include.

Here are three things to look for at tonight’s event, which kicks off at 6 pm ET:

The new PlayStation is expected to stream games over the Web. Remember Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai Inc. last year? That $380 million spend wasn’t for nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Sony is indeed expected to offer cloud-based gaming components with the new console (in addition to playing good old-fashioned optical discs). There’s a chance that Sony will make older games available only through streaming if the discs aren’t forward compatible with the new console. But there could be new streaming content in there, as well.

This is notable mostly because it underscores the shift toward casual, Web- and mobile-based games that has been impacting the hard-core gaming industry. But cloud-based gaming can be technically difficult, as the story points out, so it will be interesting to see how Sony manages this.

Mobile, mobile, mobile. Even videogame consoles aren’t immune to the mobile craze. There are a couple of ways Sony could go here — and maybe it will do both — when it comes to mobile: More integration between the console and the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s not-exactly-best-selling handheld device, or with complimentary mobile apps that work with games on the PS4 console and network. This would allow for enhanced play both in the living room and, potentially, on the go, too, where consumers generally fire up their casual (free!) games.

Briefly consider, as an example, the Wii U from Nintendo, which recently had to cut its sales forecast for the new console, and might not have aimed right when it made a proprietary tablet-like controller. But take away “proprietary” and “controller” and you’ve got a tablet — which has proved it has a place in gaming.

Here we are now, entertain us. Most people who watch Web videos and movies on their TV sets don’t have “smart” TVs. In fact, most aren’t even using Apple TV or Roku. They’re using videogame consoles. And in that arena Sony faces formidable competition in Microsoft’s Xbox console, which in the past claimed the Most-Popular, Non-PC Video-Streaming Gadget superlative.

But here’s an interesting tidbit, reported by my colleague Peter Kafka late last year: Sony’s PS3 is Netflix’s biggest platform for connected-TV viewing, due in part to the fact that Sony doesn’t slap an additional subscription fee on Netflix-watching on the console. There’s a good chance that Sony will tout additional home streaming options or features as a way to bolster its brand as a multimedia platform — if not tonight, then in the near future.

AllThingsD will be at the event, bringing you up-to-date coverage, so check back here later this evening.

According to multiple reports I have received, some employees of OnLive have been walking out of their Palo Alto, Calif. offices over the last few hours laden with boxes.

And some, no surprise, are headed to a nearby bar — The Patio — presumably to drown their sorrows.

The departures from the online cloud-gaming service came after a meeting this morning in which its top execs told staff that it would be letting almost the entire staff go, but without a lot of explanation of what that meant.

While founder and CEO Steve Perlman runs a number of other digital efforts — via his own Rearden Labs — at its Silicon Valley HQ, sources said only fraction of staffers will be left to keep the servers running until a resolution for the assets is found. Kotaku reported that OnLive would be filing an “alternative to bankruptcy called an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, or ABC, in the state of California.”

It is not clear who actually owns the pricey technology and patents for OnLive, which has raised $56 million in funding from investors such as Maverick Capital, Time Warner and HTC. HTC, the Taiwanese telecom giant, invested $40 million of the total in early 2011.

That’s a lot of dough, so it is not clear what has happened or if Perlman is poised to sell off the entity.

Sony recently bought one of OnLive’s rivals in the space — Gaikai — for $380 million to turbocharge its cloud-gaming service efforts.

One thing is entirely clear: While egregiously denying it was doing so, the gaming and virtual desktop software start-up is effectively shutting down OnLive as it has been previously run.

Earlier today, an OnLive spokesperson denied the obvious situation.

“We don’t respond to rumors, but the service is not shutting down,” OnLive said, while also bizarrely flacking their games.

Last week, I heard a rumor of just this thing happening and asked a spokesperson last Friday via email: “I hear via very good sources it is closing down or cutting back.”

This was the disingenuous response: “The latest rumors have been around acquisitions — this is a new one! Not the case, but officially we never comment on rumors.”

No need for comment, as you can see from the photo above and also here that was just sent to me.

OnLive launched in 2010 as a Web portal for streaming games, which it demoed here, from the D: All Things Digital conference in 2010.

As Lauren Goode wrote earlier: “In addition to its cloud-based gaming platform, which runs on PCs, tablets and now Google TV products, OnLive also offers [Microsoft] Office-based, virtual desktop software for [Apple] iPads and [Google] Android tablets, which got the Palo-Alto-based start up in some hot water with Microsoft earlier this year.”

Mashable first reported on the possible layoffs earlier. Let’s upgrade that to actual.

Created by game industry vet Julie Uhrman and designed by Yves Behar, the Ouya is an open-sourced console running its own user interface and game store on top of an Android OS. It’s built with a Tegra3 chipset for HD game play, and comes with a compatible, Ouya-branded controller.

Boxer8, the name of Uhrman’s start-up company, is launching a fundraising campaign today on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The Ouya expected to cost $99.

Unlike traditional game consoles, the Ouya won’t have an optical drive. It will be built with one gigabyte of RAM, 8GB of flash storage and an HDMI port for connecting directly to the TV, in addition to both wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. The controller is designed with two standard analog sticks, eight game-play buttons and a touchpad.

Uhrman’s end goal is to develop a system that not only provides easy access to games and uninterrupted connectivity for players, but is also an open platform for developers and hackers. Any publisher can develop a game through the console’s built-in software development kit, and developers choose the pricing model, as long as the initial download is free. Hacking the device won’t result in a voided warranty.

So game players will have access to online games, Android apps and games created specifically for Ouya, all as part of a free-to-play model, says Urhman, the former head of digital distribution at IGN. When asked about specific titles — for example, whether there will be titles to sate the appetites of hardcore gamers — Urhman said it was too early to discuss partnerships with publishers, given that the start-up is still in the fundraising stage.

You might think: Do we need another console? Some analysts have been predicting the slow phase-out of the game console for a while now, as more games shift to the cloud and become available online and on mobile devices. Services like OnLive, which allows consumers to stream games to their TV, or to a PC or Mac, have spurred further discussion about the demise of the console.

And this year at E3, electronics giant Samsung announced plans to build an online gaming service, powered by Gaikai and Nvidia, directly into its “smart” Internet-connected TVs.

On the flip side of that, many Internet-connected TVs don’t yet have the chipsets needed to smoothly run graphics-heavy games. As more games migrate to the cloud, gamers used to the processing power of a console may find themselves waiting for technology to catch up.

Ouya, in the meantime, is hoping to position itself as the go-to device for online gaming.

“Ultimately, we believe that the console is going to go away,” Uhrman said in an interview. “We think it’s all going to the TV. That’s why our focus is also on the platform and the controller, which, for the most part, has been an afterthought.”

Boxer8 is looking to raise $950,000 on Kickstarter to produce the initial batch of Ouyas. Current investors include former Digg CEO Jay Adelson, and Hosain Rahman, the founder of Jawbone.

Update: In just eight hours and with 29 days left to go in its campaign, the Ouya has surpassed its fund-raising goal of $950,000, with more than eight thousand backers throwing money behind the new game console.

We here at AllThingsD aren’t the most hardcore of gamers, but my colleague Tricia Duryee and I were there in full force to hear about Microsoft Xbox’s SmartGlass app, Sony’s new game titles, and Nintendo’s nod toward the “holiday season” for the release of its upcoming Wii U console. We also roamed the floors of the Los Angeles Convention Center to capture the best images from the event.

So, it may be game over for now, but for your viewing pleasure:

RELATED POSTS:

• Nintendo Holds Back the Goods on Wii U Launch Date
• Nintendo Reveals a Wii Bit More About the Wii U
• From Sony, More Games and More Cross-Platform Play
• Ubisoft Prepping Eight Wii U Titles, Including Exclusives Like Zombi U
• EA Building Up Its Facebook Empire — This Time With SimCity Social
• Ear-Splitting, Eyeball-Peeling Demos From EA
• Microsoft Calls Dibs on New Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for Xbox
• Microsoft Doubling Down on Video and Music for the Xbox
• Microsoft Unloads the Latest for Xbox: Shooters, Sports and Songs
• Nintendo’s Wii U Embraces Social Networking (Video)
• E3 Interview: EA’s Riccitiello Promises to Make “Eyeballs Peel”

Others have said: Consoles are on their way out and the cloud is where it’s at.

Samsung, for one, is planning on rolling out a cloud-based gaming service on its LED 7000 series TVs through a partnership with Gaikai, an interactive network that delivers PC-based games through the Web, and chip maker Nvidia.

The app, called Samsung Cloud Gaming, will be accessible through Samsung’s Smart Hub, its media center on Smart TVs. Samsung expects the service to stream “console-quality hit games” – sans consoles — to 40 million TVs in the next 12 months.

The service is entering beta testing this summer and will launch this fall.

The games offered will be a mix of family-friendly and hardcore games, including Bulletstorm and World of Warcraft. In terms of hardware, Samsung Cloud Gaming will work with a variety of both wired and wireless controllers.

“Consoles are a six-year cycle, while our processors double their speed every two years,” says Keita Iida, director of global content management at Nvidia, which makes the chip powering Samsung’s cloud-based service. “Will some hardcore gamers still go to consoles? Sure, but we think you’ll be able to get the same thing on connected screens and mobile devices.”

But, to that point, as more hardcore games migrate to the cloud, gamers used to the processing power of a console may find themselves waiting for technology to catch up to content.

Cloud-based gaming services won’t work on just any device to start. Only new high-end 7000 Series TVs will support Samsung’s service because of the dual-core processors needed to stream the games.

When asked about whether the future holds a console-free gaming world, Marc Whitten, corporate vice president of Microsoft Xbox Live, said in an interview with AllThingsD that the functions the Kinect performs require too much processing power to see it happening in the cloud. “I don’t think we’re going to be sending a frame-by-frame map of our living rooms out of the house and into the cloud.”

RELATED POSTS:

• Nintendo Holds Back the Goods on Wii U Launch Date
• Nintendo Reveals a Wii Bit More About the Wii U
• From Sony, More Games and More Cross-Platform Play
• Ubisoft Prepping Eight Wii U Titles, Including Exclusives Like Zombi U
• EA Building Up Its Facebook Empire — This Time With SimCity Social
• Ear-Splitting, Eyeball-Peeling Demos From EA
• Microsoft Calls Dibs on New Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for Xbox
• Microsoft Doubling Down on Video and Music for the Xbox
• Microsoft Unloads the Latest for Xbox: Shooters, Sports and Songs
• Nintendo’s Wii U Embraces Social Networking (Video)
• E3 Interview: EA’s Riccitiello Promises to Make “Eyeballs Peel”

Nintendo listed 23 titles that will launch alongside the Wii U, including Super Mario Bros. U, Pimkin 3, Batman Arkham City, Zombi U, Rabbids Lands and more. Another title, NintendoLand, offers mini-games like Donkey Kong within the game.

Nintendo President of America Reggie Fils-Aime said NintendoLand would become available when the Wii U launches — “this holiday season.”

But aside from that, the game maker kept mum on details regarding launch date and price, to the disappointment of some E3 attendees.

The Japanese gaming company first announced the Wii U at last year’s E3, with more details about the device trickling out in recent months.

Just a couple days ago, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata appeared in a video and revealed that the tablet-like game controller for the game system is officially called the GamePad. He also announced plans for a Web-based social network, Miiverse, which won’t link to other social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

Fils-Aime did reveal today that the Wii U will work with up to two GamePads. Traditional Wii controllers, as well as Nintendo’s new secondary Pro Controller, will also work with the Wii U for multiplayer game play.

The GamePad has a 6.2-inch touchscreen display and a forward-facing camera, and in addition to acting as a controller for the Wii U gaming system, it offers standalone games, video chatting and Internet browsing.

It now also has near field communication (NFC), which allows for the wireless sharing of data between devices.

Nintendo faces formidable competition from other console makers like Microsoft and Sony, both of which have introduced motion-sensor and gesture control technology to their newer gaming consoles in the past year and a half. Microsoft in particular has built up the library of media and entertainment apps available on Xbox 360 to draw consumers who aren’t necessarily hardcore gamers — an audience that Nintendo had previously been successful in wooing.

Nintendo reported that it sold 4.5 million Wii units in 2011, having gotten a boost during the holiday season. Last year, the game maker dropped the price of the six-year-old console to $150 from $200.

In the video posted Sunday, Iwata said the Wii U system was a much more friendly environment compared to the war-torn, trash-talking environments found on Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

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:

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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):

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