AllThingsD » games

Your Smartphone as Superman: 86 Percent Use Phones for “Just-in-Time” Situations

Lauren Goode — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:39:55 +0000

Many mobile phone owners use their devices for non-urgent purposes like gaming (an addiction to Draw Something doesn’t qualify as urgent). But a huge chunk of U.S. consumers are using their cellphones and smartphones for more pressing needs — something Pew Internet Research is calling the “just-in-time” phenomenon.

A new Pew survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults shows that 70 percent of all cellphone owners and 86 percent of smartphone owners say they’ve used their phones in the past 30 days to access immediate information, solve a problem or get help in an emergency.

The fact that cellphones and smartphones are being used as need-it-now devices really isn’t that surprising, since they put the world’s trove of information in our pockets. What’s more interesting is how those situations are categorized — something the mobile ad industry might want to pay heed to.

The majority of those surveyed — 41 percent — say they’ve used their phones for the basic task of coordinating meetings or get-togethers.

That outweighs the number of people who say they’ve used their phones to look up a restaurant (30 percent), check sports scores (23 percent) and get transit information (20 percent).

Less than one-fifth of those surveyed said they’ve used their phone in an emergency situation in the past 30 days, which is probably a good thing.

Another interesting tidbit: Despite the fact that slightly more women than men now own smartphones, as my AllThingsD colleague Ina Fried reports, men who own mobile phones are more likely than women to look up information during an argument. Some 31 percent of men admit to doing this, compared with 22 percent of women.

Could this be because women are less likely to experience memory loss? Just saying …

(Image courtesy of Flickr/Brenderous)

Google Gets Deeper Into the Content Business, by Putting Money Into Machinima

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:00:46 +0000

Google has been handing out money to video makers so they’ll make more stuff for YouTube. Now it’s putting money into a video maker itself.

The search giant is set to invest in Machinima, one of the most popular networks on YouTube, via a funding round that should close within a month. Machinima focuses almost exclusively on YouTube videos for and about videogame players, and generates more than a billion views a month.

People familiar with the round tell me it should end up raising more than $30 million, and will value the company at around $190 million, post-funding. No comment from Google or Machinima.

Google will be one of several investors backing Machinima in this round. And even if it put in the entire amount itself, it wouldn’t be material for a company that did $8.1 billion last quarter.

But the move has significant symbolism, because it’s the first time Google has openly backed a content company by taking an equity stake. YouTube is spending more than $100 million on its much-publicized channel program, but it is writing those checks as loans to content makers, and it recoups the money via ad sales.

The deal may ruffle some feathers among other video makers, some of whom already complain that YouTube favors Machinima and a handful of prominent content partners. And people familiar with the funding round tell me that at one point Google considered routing the investment through its Google Ventures arm to try to allay those concerns.

The counter to that argument: Why shouldn’t Google back content producers who make stuff for its properties? After all, YouTube is trying to become more like TV. And most of the big TV networks own their own studios outright.

Games Taking a Back Seat to Social Networking on the Phone

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:54:24 +0000

For the first time in four years, games are not the top category of applications on the phone.

In fact, consumers are now spending equal amounts of time social networking and playing games, according to Flurry, which provides tools to app developers to track consumer behavior.

In the first quarter, Flurry found that the average consumer spent 24 minutes on games and social networking — each — every day. In the same period a year earlier, consumers spent 25 minutes playing games and only 15 minutes social networking.

In a blog post, Flurry’s Peter Farago explains that while time is now evenly split, the shift is more severe when you calculate the percentage of time spent on each type of application. By doing so, you can see that time spent on gaming has dropped as overall usage on phone applications has increased from 68 minutes a day to 77 minutes a day.

In the first quarter, consumers spent 31 percent of their time playing games, falling from 37 percent a year ago. Likewise, social networking has soared from 22 percent to 37 percent.

Social networking on the phone would include Facebook and other applications like Instagram (which Facebook just acquired for $1 billion). Games include everything from Rovio’s Angry Birds to Zynga’s Words With Friends. Other popular phone categories include news and entertainment.

Flurry also discovered that advertisers have followed the change in behavior with more ad revenue being generated by social networking apps than games. In April, 37 percent of ad revenue went toward social networking apps versus 36 percent going toward games. Just two months earlier, games were generating 35 percent of ad revenue and social networking was generating only 24 percent.

One limitation of the study is that it is looking only at smartphones and does not take into account behavior on tablets, where a lot of gaming is taking place.

New York Times Game Lets You Blow Up the New York Times

Peter Kafka — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:47:39 +0000

Now this is how you promote a long, thinky story on the Web: Tack a free, super easy shoot-’em-up game at the top. The story is a new piece in the New York Times magazine, about the rise of casual games like Angry Birds. The game lets you destroy, Asteroids-style, most of the Web page surrounding it, including the ads. Poynter’s Steve Myers has more.

Games Are Fun

Bo Kim — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:01:24 +0000

Games are fun. But they can be socially relevant too. Please share this. At Draw Something, by OMGPOP & Zynga, we just added the word HOODIE.

– OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter, via Twitter

Rovio Marketing Engine Thrusts Into Warp Speed on Eve of Angry Birds Space

Ina Fried — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:55:00 +0000

Rovio is definitely pulling out all the stops when it comes to promoting the next installment of its Angry Birds franchise.

The company has already filmed a video in space and taken over Samsung’s party at South by Southwest. A book tie-in, produced with National Geographic, has also sold out at Amazon (though more copies are promised for later this week).

The game itself, Angry Birds Space, is due to start arriving in app stores at midnight PT on Thursday, and is set to launch simultaneously for Android, iOS, Mac and PC. The game play is familiar to those who have played past titles, but adds the twist of new characters, as well as both zero-gravity space regions and planets with varying amounts of gravity.

Beyond the games, the company has lots of other merchandise launching, including plush toys of the new space-themed characters, some of which were on display in Austin and in a press kit mailed out this week.

Walmart is partnering with Rovio to offer bonus “Golden Eggsteroid” levels to customers, offering clues on its Facebook page and on the price tags and packaging of various Angry Birds merchandise. “We wanted to give our fans a unique retail extension to Angry Birds Space that rewards them for their eagle eyes,” Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka said in a statement.

Rovio is also expanding its efforts to bring the birds into the real world through various “activity parks.” New ones are launching in the U.K., following the first one in Tampere, Finland. Rovio is also working on theme park tie-ins, but those are costlier and longer-term. Plus, the smaller playgrounds are more hands-on, Rovio said.

Also, I was told on Wednesday by Vesterbacka to “expect the unexpected.”

So there may be even more products and/or hijinks afoot.

For all its ambitions to be the next Disney, Rovio is, for the moment, tied directly to the fortunes of its flagship birds and pigs, though Rovio CEO Mikael Hed last month told AllThingsD about its non-Angry Birds efforts, which include a game already in development.

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Exclusive: BermanBraun Buys Most of Shelby Bonnie's Whiskey Media

Kara Swisher — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:30:32 +0000

In a deal that was just signed, longtime Silicon Valley exec Shelby Bonnie has sold his social publishing start-up, Whiskey Media, to Santa Monica-based entertainment and interactive production company BermanBraun.

As part of the deal, BermanBraun will get three key sites of San Francisco-based Whiskey, including video entertainment-focused Screened, tech-testing site Tested, and Anime Vice, which covers anime and manga comics. It will also acquire Whiskey’s content-publishing platform.

Two other sites owned by Whiskey — games-oriented Giant Bomb and comic-book database Comic Vine — will be sold to another media company, which is rumored to be CBS Interactive.

Heaped on top of the niche content, aimed at passionate fans, Whiskey mixes in a lot of social networking, as well as user-generated content, along with its professional fare.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

But the major reason for the acquisition is that BermanBraun — which also makes popular sites for large portals such as Microsoft’s MSN (the Wonderwall celebrity site and Glo, aimed at the women’s lifestyle arena) and AOL (upcoming sites on weather, men and pets) — needs to be able to scale its online content production. The Whiskey platform should be able to allow it to more easily grow and create new sites more quickly, as well as mine data across them.

“With the addition of Whiskey’s first rate team and powerful, state of the art publishing, data and social tools platform, we will be able to further enhance our user experience and engagement, and provide our advertising partners with unparalleled data insights,” said Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, who run BermanBraun, in a statement. “One of the other great parts of this acquisition is that we will have Shelby Bonnie in our lives. We have enormous respect for Shelby personally and professionally, and his insights, relationships and acumen will be invaluable to us.”

Bonnie, who was once CEO of CNET, which he helped found, added: “I have had the pleasure of knowing both Lloyd and Gail for years and they are two incredibly high integrity people who bring passion and creativity to the interactive space. As we see a dramatic changes in the whole media landscape, success will demand new skills and talents. BermanBraun’s content skills and vision joined with the Whiskey platform will create a combination that I believe is without equal. I couldn’t be more excited for the combination.”

Here is a video interview I did with Bonnie in mid-2010 about Whiskey:

[ See post to watch video ]

Godfather of Pong

Eric Johnson — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:23:00 +0000

I always thought of it as a family game. And it just sort of degenerated into a one player type thing which was never in my mind.

– Ralph Baer, inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home videogame system, on how videogames didn’t end up being the family activities he imagined they would be

Can Playing More Games Make Your Life "SuperBetter"? Jane McGonigal Thinks So.

Lauren Goode — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:40:35 +0000

Jane McGonigal, gaming evangelist and author of the New York Times best-seller “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World,” claims that her new gaming program will not only help people improve their lives — it will help them live longer, too.

In a SXSW session called “A Crash Course in Becoming SuperBetter,” McGonigal promised attendees at least 7.5 extra minutes of life with her new online and mobile game, SuperBetter.

In the game, “bad guys” are things like mental blockers, headaches, and pressure. Quests are things to accomplish in the next 24 hours, future boosts are events players indicate they’re looking forward to and power packs are packaged game solutions that help players accomplish certain goals, for a fee. The score of the game is based on resilience, which fluctuates depending on how players are feeling on any given day or how engaged they are in the game.

McGonigal referred to a recent report that came out on the top five regrets dying people have. Things such as “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard,” “I wish I’d stayed in touch with friends” and “I wish I had let myself be happier” topped the list. McGonigal acknowledged that “I wish I’d played more video games” was nowhere on the list — but said she hears the potential for it.

Games, she said, can bring families together, help facilitate social interactions and alleviate depression and stress.

Essentially, McGonigal is looking to eradicate the image of the unproductive, couch-potato videogame player and show how such games can actually be beneficial.

Some 72 percent of American households play computer and video games, according to recent data from the Entertainment Software Association; 68 percent of parents believe that game play provides mental stimulation or education, while 57 percent believe games encourage their family to spend to time together.

McGonigal cited Google’s social goal management platform, a new app called Everest and the Lift project, an “application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement” from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, as evidence that life improvement programs are using game mechanics and taking shape across digital and mobile platforms.

McGonigal also said she doesn’t believe playing virtual games means people aren’t embedded in reality. The opposite of virtual isn’t real, she said; the root of virtual is “virtus, which meant excellence, potency, efficacy.”

McGonigal’s career in the gaming world began in 2009, after she suffered a brain injury that left her feeling suicidal. She developed a game called Jane the Concussion Slayer — playing off the popular TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — and uploaded a video of the game to YouTube. Shortly afterward, she said she began receiving letters from people who were applying the principals of her recovery game to other challenges, such as depression, PTSD, quitting smoking, knee surgery, and even chemotherapy.

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Rovio Shows Off Angry Birds Space -- From Space

Ina Fried — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:49:36 +0000

Rovio took to the International Space Station on Thursday to show off the first game-play scenes for the upcoming Angry Birds Space game.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit made the announcement Friday while orbiting 242 miles above the Earth in a video posted to YouTube. In it, he shows off how the game play will work, by launching a stuffed Angry Bird in zero gravity, along with a makeshift pig he drew on a green balloon.

The Finnish gamemaker had already said it would launch the game March 22, with simultaneous availability for Mac, PC, iOS and Android, as well as merchandise and animation.

Rovio is clearly trying to generate as much buzz as possible for the game. It also plans to show the game running on a Samsung Galaxy Note at the upcoming SXSW conference in Austin.

There is clearly a big promotional tie-in with Samsung for the space game, as the Galaxy Note is featured heavily in Thursday’s NASA video, as well.

Rovio is counting on its birds — and this latest sequel — to justify its orbital valuation and sky-high ambitions for the company.

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed talked with AllThingsD last month about his plans for the company, including a non-Angry Birds game that is also in the works.

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Big Fish Scoops Up Mobile Casino-Game Maker Self Aware Games

Lauren Goode — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:02:02 +0000

Casual-gaming company Big Fish has acquired mobile social game developer Self Aware Games, makers of Card Ave: Casino, and its parent company, Social Concepts, in a cash-equity deal of an undisclosed amount. The acquisition comes as more gaming companies are exploring opportunities in gambling-themed games and U.S. states weigh the legalization of Internet gambling. Seattle-based Big Fish, which has more than 2,500 games in its catalog and 45 million game downloads per month, saw revenue north of $180 million in 2011, the company said.

Zynga Shares Slide After J.P. Morgan Downgrade

Lauren Goode — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:10:24 +0000

Shares of Zynga were down nearly 6 percent Monday morning following a J.P. Morgan downgrade from “overweight” to “neutral.” The note comes after a 51 percent run-up since last January, which analyst Doug Anmuth attributed to investors’ focus on social gaming, the possibility of the legalization of online gambling and optimism over Zynga’s recently-announced game platform, which pushed Zynga shares up 10 percent last Thursday. But Anmuth says he believes “game economics will not change for Zynga, and it will likely take some time to drive traffic to the new site.”

Zynga's "Project Z" Revealed: Social Games on Its Own Web Site (Through Facebook, of Course)

Lauren Goode — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:00:47 +0000

Zynga is finally pulling back the curtain on “Project Z” to reveal a beta version of Zynga’s own social gaming platform on Zynga.com.

The move is supposed to foster a more social gaming environment that’s focused just on games, without other social media updates getting in the way.

Zynga is also opening up its game platform — which consists of 240 million monthly active users and 54 million daily active users — so third-party developers can create their own Zynga games. Developers will have access to something called Zynga’s Active Social Network, or ASN, which will tell them not only how many people are playing their games but also measure engagement levels.

So what about Zynga and Facebook’s codependency? While it may initially seem as though Zynga is staking an independent claim, it’s still cozy with Facebook when it comes to its own gaming site.

Users will still have to log in to Zynga.com through Facebook Connect in order to play the games — which will include CastleVille, CityVille, and Zynga Poker. (And, for fans of the Words With Friends mobile app, it’s going to be available on Zynga.com, as well.)

Players can start a game on Zynga.com and then easily pick it up on Facebook, and vice versa. There are still the same sharing functionalities, in terms of sharing scores and progress.

In terms of revenue sharing, it’s unclear whether Facebook will glean revenue from ads on Zynga.com. Zynga.com will launch with ads, a Zynga spokesperson confirmed, but said the company is not revealing financial details at this time.

However, while Facebook hasn’t been sharing revenue with Zynga from ads that appear on its own social network, there are agreements in place for Facebook in the future to sell advertising on a site hosted by Zynga, according to a story my AllThingsD colleague Tricia Duryee wrote.

There are some notable ways in which Zynga’s own gaming site differs from the experience of Zynga games on Facebook, though. Zynga.com offers a clutter-free news feed that’s only about gaming, unlike a Facebook feed dotted with Zynga game scores amid status updates and photos of food experiences and kids in Halloween costumes. There’s also a live chat box for real-time communication among game players, which, unlike Facebook’s IM box, keeps the game going while you’re chatting; and Zynga players can become “zFriends” with each other, without having to be Facebook friends.

“We know that our users, whether it’s for gaming or not, spend time on Facebook,” Manuel Bronstein, general manager of Zynga Direct, said. “They wake up in the morning, they check Facebook. And the reality is, we need to reach the players wherever they are.”

Bronstein stressed that the company wanted to keep gamers active by creating a truly social gaming portal and by adding more games from outside developers. In some cases, Zynga sees a big dropoff in engagement when a player is waiting days or longer for a friend to play their turn, or send a gift back. The company is hoping that, by creating more of a multiplayer environment, it can expedite the wait time in between plays and just keep people playing.

Zynga first unveiled its plans for “Project Z” back in October 2011, alongside 10 new games. The company said then it would still be a Facebook Connect-enabled platform, but also said it would be an environment tailored just for games.

As was pointed out at the time of the Zynga event, there were a few areas of gaming that Zynga had not yet entered, which had left opportunities for competitors to succeed on Facebook. With Zynga’s new games and the plans for “Project Z,” the gaps narrowed.

In Facebook’s recent S-1 filing, the social networking giant revealed just how dependent it was on Zynga, with Zynga accounting for around 12 percent of Facebook’s $3.7 billion in revenue last year. Facebook said social games are currently responsible for “substantially all of” its revenue generated from payments (outside of advertising revenue.)

New From Blizzard Entertainment: World of Workforce Reductions

John Paczkowski — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:21:57 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment, creator of the Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft video game franchises, sacked hundreds of employees today, trimming the company down to better fit “current organizational needs.”

Some 600 workers lost their jobs, most of them in divisions not related to game development. Blizzard says the World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted, despite continued subscriber losses. WoW lost well over a million and a half players last year.

Ugly news, but Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime said in a post to the WoW forums that the company needs to better manage its resources to continue to drive its gaming business. Which is exactly what it plans to do.

“We remain committed to shipping multiple games this year,” Morhaime said. “Our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today’s announcement. We’re continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects.”

Zynga Ad Exec Manny Anekal Leaves for Mobile Start-Up Kiip

Peter Kafka — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:55:12 +0000

Manny Anekal, who headed up brand advertising for Zynga, has left the company. He’s now chief operating officer at Kiip, a start-up that hands out “branded rewards” to mobile games players. Business Insider reported the move earlier. Prior to Zynga, Anekal had run ads at Electronic Arts and Massive, the game ad start-up acquired by Microsoft.

Angry Birds Make Plans to Head Into Space

Ina Fried — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:25:54 +0000

Having fully taken over Earth, the Angry Birds are looking for new planets to conquer.

Next month, Rovio plans to launch Angry Birds Space, which it says is the biggest expansion of the franchise thus far.

“Angry Birds Space is a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love — plus some surprises,” Rovio’s Sini Matikainen said in an email.

In addition to the game itself, Rovio plans to simultaneously release publishing, animation, retail and other space-themed projects.

It’s not the first Angry Birds spinoff. The company has its Angry Birds Seasons game, which adds various holiday motifs, as well as Angry Birds Rio, a movie tie-in game.

RealNetworks Clings to GameHouse, Hoping to Ride Social Gaming Wave

Lauren Goode — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:05:39 +0000

Things are looking grim for RealNetworks.

The maker of digital media delivery software reported $80.2 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011, a decrease of 5 percent from the previous quarter and an 18 percent year-over-year decrease. That included a 21 percent decrease in games revenue to $21.6 million.

And its net loss for the year was $27.1 million, compared to a $5 million profit a year ago. In its outlook, RealNetworks said it expects revenue from each of its segments to decline sequentially and year over year, as new CEO Thomas Nielsen continues to restructure and simplify its businesses.

But, amid a growing social gaming market, RealNetworks is clinging to its GameHouse business — at least for now. The company has said twice before it was planning to spin off the unit, but is still holding on to what it believes could be a social gaming “powerhouse.”

While RealNetworks doesn’t break out gaming data other than the aggregate games revenue, the company’s declines were offset somewhat by gains in its social gaming business, it said.

RealNetworks’ GameHouse, as my colleague Tricia Duryee explains here, concentrates on casual games, such as puzzle games, slot machines or what might be described as “match-three” games. Currently some of its best titles are UNO, Scrabble, Collapse! Blast and its latest, Bayou Blast. Its revenues are generated from microtransactions of virtual goods.

Over the past year, GameHouse has been edging toward a top 10 ranking in terms of game makers on Facebook.

And it’s seeing a boost in daily and monthly active users that is encouraging to Matt Hulett, who’s been running the gaming arm as its president for the past year.

GameHouse’s daily active users have now hit 1.3 million, up from 700,000, Hulett said, and its monthly active users increased around 3 million to more 7.5 million. (For perspective, Zynga now has 240 million monthly active users.)

Hulett also said that GameHouse’s daily user traffic is up 75 percent quarter over quarter. Users seem to like the new Blast games, Hulett said, which he’s hoping will drive growth in the first quarter, and GameHouse plans to introduce two or three new games in the next few months, including a slots game. It also plans to expand its 270-person staff by about 45 people by the end of this year.

But on the earnings call, RealNetworks’ Nielsen would say only that GameHouse “could” be a business the company might anchor itself around, and that if it focuses entirely on gaming, the other parts of RealNetworks, which include digital video delivery and download tools and the Rhapsody subscription music service, would no longer fit into RealNetworks. (In January, RealNetworks successfully sold $120 million worth of software and patents to Intel, as the chip maker looks to use the technology in current and upcoming video streaming products.)

Another scenario could be that previously mentioned spinoff as RealNetworks looks to streamline. And the market is ripe for social gaming companies: In recent months, DoubleDown and PopCap have sold to bigger gaming companies for $500 million and $1 billion, respectively.

“We have perhaps been sniffed more times than a dog at a dog park,” Hulett said, reiterating that there’s been a lot of inbound interest for GameHouse.

Whether one of those sniffs has come from a gaming company named after a dog — Zynga — Hulett declined to say. “When we’re ready to do something, we’ll do it.”

In This Online Word Game, the Winning Spell Is Love

Shayndi Raice and Geoffrey A. Fowler — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:04:54 +0000

Last summer, Kyla Smith spelled S-E-X-Y in Words With Friends, an online Scrabble-like app on her phone. It won her more than just 13 points — it won her love.

Eventually her opponent, Charles Briggs, became her boyfriend. Up to that point, the two hadn’t met in person. She lived in Texas, he lived in Arkansas. They met through the “random opponent” feature of Words With Friends, which matches up anonymous players.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Online Commerce Trend: More Spending, Smaller Purchases

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:22:03 +0000

The average checkout size is shrinking, even though more people spent more money online this holiday season.

In November and December, the number of online transactions increased by 37 percent, and overall sales jumped by 25 percent. But the average ticket size declined by 9 percent, according to Chase Paymentech, which analyzes information across the top 50 e-commerce retailers.

As it turns out, more consumers are turning to e-commerce for more of their everyday spending, rather than reserving online purchases for big-ticket items.

Here are Chase’s three reasons for the decline:

More consumers are purchasing digital media, which has a lower price point than most physical goods — MP3s cost less than CDs, e-books cost less than paperbacks, and apps cost less than game cartridges.
Prices for popular electronics, such as tablets, e-readers and TVs, are falling.
More retailers are offering free shipping, which eliminates the incentive to fill carts to reach a free-shipping threshold.

EBay, which is the first major e-commerce provider to report Q4 results, confirmed it was also seeing the trend. The company’s payments division, PayPal, reported smaller transactions during the fourth quarter across the merchants it serves.

John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, explained in an interview that the biggest driver of that trend was eBay’s acquisition of Zong, a mobile payments provider that powers the sale of digital goods. In addition, Donahoe said retailers, including eBay, heavily discounted products in order to drive more purchases this holiday.

Amazon, which is the leading e-commerce provider, also said that it is selling a lot of low-priced digital goods, ranging from e-books to MP3s.

Historically, the company has said that Christmas is the largest day of digital sales on Amazon.com, followed by Dec. 26. In 2010, from Christmas Eve through Dec. 30, Amazon customers purchased three times more digital content — including Kindle books, magazines, movies, TV shows, music and digital games — compared to the weekly average for the year.

Despite transactions declining overall, Chase identified two exceptions: Apparel and footwear rose 6 percent; toys rose 10 percent year over year.

(Amazon photo courtesy of thisisbossi)

Take-Two Expects Full-Year Loss on Max Payne 3 Delay

Ben Fox Rubin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:30:43 +0000

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. warned it expects a loss for fiscal 2012 as it has to delay the launch of its Max Payne 3 videogame to May from March.

“We do not take changes to our release schedule lightly, and this short delay will ensure that Max Payne 3 delivers the highest quality, groundbreaking entertainment experience that is expected from our company,” said Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Boss Talk: Zynga Chief Talks IPO, Lessons Learned

Shayndi Raice — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Zynga Inc. Chief Executive Mark Pincus ended 2011 as the face of an overhyped Web initial public offering. Now he wants to show the hype was justified.

Early last year, his San Francisco company, which makes social games such as “FarmVille” that are played on Facebook, was on track for one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2011. But when Zynga finally went public last month, its stock price dropped 5% on the first day of trading and has since consistently traded below its $10 offering price.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Treehouse Turns Learning to Build a Web Site Into a Game With Code Racer

Liz Gannes — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:39:06 +0000

Learning to code could be this year’s hot new pastime. Codecademy signed up 320,000 people for its 2012 “Code Year” New Year’s resolution. Stanford signed up 50,000 students for a free online CS101 class starting next month.

Now, Treehouse is looking to help people learn the very practical skill of building a Web site. Code Racer, which launched today, is an online game that pits newbie coders and designers against each other to demonstrate their basic skills — as fast as they can.

Users log in via their Facebook credentials and are paired with other competitors. The music starts, the pulse rises and the race is on.

“You’re going to learn HTML by the sheer force of typing it over and over,” said Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson.

Code Racer is a promotion for Treehouse’s premium products, which consist of exercises and short videos taught by instructors. Facebook, Living Social and Automattic have said they’ll recruit interns based on Treehouse achievement badges.

Lessons cost $25 per month, or $49 per month with additional video resources.

Carson said that Treehouse, which only launched in November, is on track to make $2 million this year and growing quickly.

Treehouse is backed by investors including the Greylock Partners Discovery Fund and The Social+Capital Partnership.

Infinity Blade Generating Epic Revenue for Epic Games

John Paczkowski — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:22:49 +0000

Epic’s popular Infinity Blade franchise continues to rake in those App Store revenues. Launched last month, Infinity Blade II has so far generated net earnings of $5 million, bringing grand total revenues for the franchise to $30 million. A staggering sum considering Infinity Blade first hit the market a little over a year ago and the RPG sword-fighting game is available on Apple’s iOS platform alone.

Chomp: With App Searches, It's All "Free" and "Games"

Lauren Goode — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:36:01 +0000

You know what’s cool? A billion apps downloaded in a single week.

That milestone was reached in the last week of 2011. And what’s really interesting is how people are finding their apps. According to new monthly data from Chomp, a search engine for mobile apps, most users aren’t looking for specific app titles, but rather features and functions — and the top feature is “free.”

In December, 82 percent of iOS users, and 86 percent of Android users, looked for apps using such common search terms as “free,” “games,” “free games,” “fun games,” “ringtones” and “shopping,” rather than searching by name.

The word “Christmas” appeared on Chomp’s list of top search terms for December, across multiple countries. The company says query volume for the word, already elevated that month, spiked an additional 300 percent immediately before the holiday, then decreased again on Dec. 25.

Chomp’s data was culled from a sample of one million search queries, across mobile platforms iOS 4.0 and higher, and Android 2.1 and higher. Chomp, which powers app searches on Verizon Android phones, just started measuring tablet-app downloads, so those apps currently account for a very small percentage of its data.

What is somewhat surprising about this report is that other data, put out last year by Latitude and MTV Networks, shows that personal recommendation is one of the biggest driving factors when it comes to app downloads, with an estimated 53 percent of mobile app users saying their friends’ suggestions are most important when it comes to finding and trying apps. If that’s the case — say, if someone asks, “What’s that iPhone app that makes photos look old and cool?” (as I was recently asked) — users wouldn’t necessarily tell their friends to search for “free photo app” but rather, look up “Instagram.”

Chomp’s technology, however, is meant to enable app search based on functionality; it also factors user recommendations and social recommendations into its algorithm. Ben Keighran, the company’s founder and CEO, says he believes Chomp’s app-recommendation engine offers more to users than just lists of top-selling apps. (For app creators, though, nabbing a top-ranking spot in app stores has been shown to boost downloads significantly, as evidenced by RunKeeper’s 637 percent increase in average daily downloads after it became a featured app in the Android store.)

Chomp’s own list of top apps for iOS devices in December included WhatsApp Messenger, JunoWallet GiftCards, Pandora, and Adobe Photoshop Express; the top Android downloads for December were Angry Birds Rio, eBay, Google+ and Google Sky Map. GT Racing: Motor Academy Free+ was at the top of Chomp’s international download charts.

Another interesting nugget from the monthly report: While paid-app downloads on Android showed no change, paid-app downloads for iOS jumped to 30 percent of all app downloads, for the first time ever. The jump was concentrated at the 99-cent price point, which increased from 15.9 percent to 17.8 percent of all apps.

PlayStation Vita Sales Tank in Second Week

John Paczkowski — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:45:55 +0000

Sony’s new PlayStation Vita isn’t selling quite as well as it did when it first launched. Though the company reportedly sold 321,400 Vitas in the game console’s first two days of availability in Japan, demand appears to have tapered off drastically in its second week at market.

According to research outfit Media Create, which closely tracks the Japanese console gaming industry, Sony sold just 72,479 Vitas during the crucial shopping week before Christmas. That’s a massive decline in sales following the device’s debut — well over 75 percent.

In fact, at 72,479, the Vita actually sold fewer units that its predecessor, the PS3.

So what happened?

That’s not at all clear. Certainly, inventory issues could be to blame. The decline could also have something to do with early reports of problems with the device. While Sony was quick to refute such allegations — which ranged from laggy gameplay to freezes and crashes, it wasn’t able to stamp them out before reports echoing them appeared in the broader tech media.

Could such negative chatter have put this big a damper on holiday sales? Maybe. A more likely explanation, though, is the Vita’s high price, its underwhelming lineup of games at launch, and Nintendo’s decision to debut its wildly popular Monster Hunter game at the same time. Knit those three things together with reports of software glitches and you’ve got a pretty big wet blanket.

Either way, those hiccups will be well behind Sony when the PS Vita hits the U.S. and Canada on Feb. 22, with a pretty impressive lineup of launch titles.

(Media Create chart courtesy of Neograf)