games

News Byte

King Touts Latest Gaming Numbers: 70 Million Daily Players, 21 Billion Games Played Per Month

Eric Johnson in News on May 16 at 6:30 am PT

On the back of its hit Facebook/mobile game Candy Crush Saga, casual game studio King said in a press release that it has crossed the 70 million mark in daily active players across all platforms. That puts it within striking distance of Zynga’s all-time quarterly peak of 72 million daily active users (achieved in Q2 2012), and well beyond that competitor’s latest quarterly total of 52 million DAU, as reported last month. The company also said that its cross-platform games are now being played more than 21 billion times per month.

News Byte

Club Penguin Waddles Into Mobile

Eric Johnson in Mobile on May 9 at 12:01 am PT

An iPad companion app to Disney’s MMO-for-kids, Club Penguin, is slated to roll out today, the company said in a press release. Players will be able to customize and sync their penguin characters between the iPad app and the popular Web-only Flash game, and also play four mini games ported over from the Web. Disney Interactive VP Chris Heatherly (who sat down for a Q&A with AllThingsD last month) said the studio plans to update the app roughly once a month until the whole game experience is playable on mobile.

News Byte

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts

Eric Johnson in News on April 3 at 11:19 am PT

Disney has shuttered LucasArts, the games publishing and development division of Lucasfilm, which Disney acquired in October. However, the company said in a statement that, “after evaluating our position in the games market,” it still plans to license “Star Wars” characters for future games. Kotaku reports that about 150 people have been laid off as a result of the company closure. In addition to the many Star Wars videogames LucasArts had released over the years, the studio was also known for games like Sam & Max, The Secret of Monkey Island and Afterlife.

News Byte

PopCap’s Bejeweled Executive Producer Leaves for Indie-Focused Studio

Eric Johnson in News on March 21 at 6:30 am PT

Add one more name to that list of ex-EA folks now at mobile indie game publisher Tilting Point: Giordano “Gio” Contestabile, who until recently supervised the Bejeweled franchise at EA subsidiary PopCap Games. Contestabile joined PopCap in 2007, right before free-to-play games went wild on mobile. Before producing the hit puzzle series Bejeweled, he managed the business end of PopCap’s mobile games, including Plants vs. Zombies. As Tilting Point’s new VP of product management and revenue, Contestabile joins fellow EA vets Tom Frisina, Dan Sherman, Steve Coallier and Jim Hsu.