gaming

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Yahoo Scoops Up Another Small Startup: Gaming Platform PlayerScale

Kara Swisher in Media on May 23 at 7:58 am PT

Yahoo said it had bought PlayerScale, a small gaming infrastructure startup for cross-platform gaming. Yahoo has been on a bit of a tear in buying up small companies for low prices, to strengthen its talent and expertise in a wide variety of arenas, including mobile, productivity and gaming. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but PlayerScale said on its blog that it would “continue to support our existing product,” which is Player.IO.

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Cloud Gaming Startup Happy Cloud Raises $4.25 Million Series A Round

Eric Johnson in News on May 22 at 1:46 pm PT

The Happy Cloud, one of a slew of “cloud gaming” startups trying to bring videogames to new and different platforms, announced Wednesday it had raised a $4.25 million Series A round of venture capital. The round was led by Avalon Ventures and joined by Jesselson Capital and Shaman Ventures. The Happy Cloud has been in stealth mode since it launched in 2011, but claims that users who download games through its partnerships with publishers can start playing them almost instantly while the full game download finishes in the background. The company also announced the appointment of a new CEO, Tamir Buchler.

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April Was a Loser for Videogame Industry

John Paczkowski in News on May 17 at 1:36 pm PT

April was a cruel month indeed for the videogame industry. Sales of gaming hardware, software and accessories in the U.S. for the month peaked at $495.2 million, according to sales data from research firm NPD, down 25 percent from the same period in 2012. Retail software sales declined 17 percent year over year to $254.3 million. Hardware sales plummeted 42 percent from the year prior to $109.5 million. The top console for the month? Microsoft’s Xbox 360, though it sold just 130,000 units in April, down 45 percent from a year earlier.

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AMD Shares Crash on Goldman Sachs Downgrade

Arik Hesseldahl in News on May 16 at 12:40 pm PT

Shares of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices have fallen by more than 13 percent today following word of a downgrade to “sell” by Goldman Sachs analyst James Covello. With sales of PCs slowing to rates not seen since records have been kept, the outlook for AMD, Covello argues, despite winning supply contracts from both Microsoft and Sony in forthcoming gaming systems, doesn’t justify its recent rise to as high as $4.40 a share. AMD was trading at $3.80 a share, down 59 cents with 30 minutes to go in the session.