That’s the gist of a new U.S. Department of Justice filing against Apple in the agency’s upcoming lawsuit against the company. According to the DOJ, Apple was the “ringmaster” of a plan that raised mainstream e-book pricing well above the $9.99 price point Amazon had established by shifting the industry from a wholesale model, where retailers set prices, to an agency model where publishers set prices. Among the agency’s evidence supporting that allegation:

• An e-mail from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corp. — parent company of HarperCollins — that reads in part, “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”
• A comment Jobs made to biographer Walter Isaacson, explaining that Apple “told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’”

According to the DOJ, those statements are clear evidence of collusion. “Apple knew that the plan it was proposing involved a ‘dramatic business change’ for publisher defendants,” the agency argued in its filing. “Accordingly, Apple kept each publisher defendant aware that it was orchestrating and coordinating a common approach for all of them.”

Apple is now the lone holdout in the DOJ’s lawsuit, originally brought against the company and five major publishing houses last April. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have all since settled. But Apple, the alleged “ringmaster,” continues to dig its heels in.

“Apple did not conspire to fix eBook pricing,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement. “We helped transform the eBook market with the introduction of the iBookstore in 2010 bringing consumers an expanded selection of eBooks and delivering innovative new features. The market has been thriving and innovating since Apple’s entry and we look forward to going to trial to defend ourselves.”

Below, the DOJ’s latest filing:

apple7 –

But while the gaming hardware was notably absent, consumers did get a glimpse of some key upcoming game titles, as well as Sony’s plans to offer cloud gaming, more integration with PS Vita, and even some concept games that use Sony’s motion-sensor device, the Move.

AllThingsD sat down with Jack Tretton, the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, to discuss the future of the gaming console — as well as why Sony didn’t show theirs last night — and Sony’s strategy of “doubling down” on its hardcore gaming audience.

I think it was Sony’s Andrew House who said right off the bat that the living room is no longer the focal point of gaming. Can you further explain this idea and how it relates to the future of the console?

My interpretation is that the living room used to be the only place that gaming lived. Now it’s the primary place, but it’s not the exclusive place. So I still think that sitting on the couch in front of the TV with a powerful console like PlayStation is the nerve center of the experience, but it doesn’t end there — it extends out into the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on smartphones and tablets and dedicated devices like Vita. It’s a little bit scary if you’re a core gamer, because you feel like if you go to sleep, you might miss something.

A good portion of tonight’s event was on game titles, not as much on cloud streaming, mobile or entertainment. Is Sony PlayStation doubling down on its position with hard-core gamers?

Well, I think the console has evolved beyond strictly gaming devices. People expect multimedia capabilities, and that’s certainly a given. But what we’re all about, in our DNA, is the gaming and the gamers. You buy [PlayStation] because you’re a gamer and you enjoy playing games, and you use it for other purposes, but we’re first and foremost about that core gamer that eats, sleeps and drinks the gaming.

I think there are more gamers today than there have been ever before, and the core is really strong, and loyal.

But at the same time, at least in the U.S. market, Microsoft has had the best-selling console for many months in a row now, and they’ve taken a media-heavy approach. What’s your thought on their strategy?

We look at the market in worldwide terms, and every market is extremely important to us. The facts are, we debuted the PlayStation 3 at $599, which was an extremely steep price barrier for a lot of consumers. And we debuted a year after Microsoft, but on a worldwide basis, we’ve sold the same, if not more, devices. I think we’re at 77 million sold right now — it’s basically splitting hairs. Despite all that, our message has been extremely well-received around the world.

Plus, if you look at multimedia services, we’re the No. 1 streaming device when it comes to Netflix, not Xbox. They’re trying to — I don’t really know what they’re trying to do. I’d rather not comment on their strategy. But we’re trying to say we’re all about the gamers and, by the way, there’s multimedia out there. I think the people who tuned in to see this live streaming event, from all around the world, were watching to see the gaming.

Will the new console cost $599 to start?

I certainly hope not. I think we’re very proud of what we delivered with the PlayStation 3 in terms of technology, and that we were able to enhance the features while still reducing the price to $249. But I think our goal with this is to debut at a more consumer-friendly price. But we haven’t made any final decisions about what the price will be at launch.

Why didn’t we see the new console today?

I guess when I think about the console, you open it up, you look at it, you certainly look at it when you insert a disc, but for most people, it’s behind a cabinet or on a shelf somewhere and you spend all your time looking at the screen. And we wanted to show people the screen. There will be multiple opportunities to share the look of the console between now and the launch. We just didn’t choose this first event as the time to show it.

But is it ready?

I mean, we’re certainly capable of showing playable game content, but we don’t have a mass-production box that we can bring out and pull out. That’s still in development in terms of final specs and design.

It wasn’t a big surprise today that there were some cloud-gaming announcements, given Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai. But cloud gaming, especially when it comes to graphics-heavy stuff, can suffer some technical difficulties. How does Sony plan to manage that?

I think that all credit goes to Gaikai, and all credit goes to Sony for recognizing the strength of Gaikai and acquiring them. We’ve cerainly had cloud storage, but Gaikai seemed to be well ahead of anybody else that we saw, and were doing things we didn’t think were possible. So I think the acquisition allows us to do things that are more in line with consumer expectations; allow them to play the games they expect.

And PS4 can play those games. I’ve certainly seen it done that every game we’ve ever published, up through PS3, is playable with no latency. I don’t know if we’re saying we’re at that stage yet, but we think we can get there in the near term.

That’s a pricing maneuver so bold it may make even Cosmo readers blush. In the book and newspaper industries, digital versions are typically cheaper than print ones. But some in the magazine world are going the other way, charging more for their digital versions.

Buffeted by declining advertising, which accounted for about 75% of their revenue historically, magazines are turning to tablet computers and digital editions to boost circulation revenue. In doing so, they are hoping to reset decades of subscription discounting so deep that a year’s supply of magazines like Esquire currently costs just $8.

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Untraditional as it may be, the airplane is one way I routinely discover new snack foods. Another trendy way is subscription commerce, which gets consumers to sign up for a monthly box that comes loaded with a handful of products for a fee. The business model has been applied to an exhaustive list of categories: Makeup, coffee, food, kids’ toys and crafts (check out subscriptionboxes.com to get even more ideas).

Now Walmart is experimenting with the concept, too. Today it launches Goodies Co., a monthly service that will send you a package of sweets and snacks for $7, including shipping. The twist on this particular offering is something that the megaretailer does best — pricing things unbelievably low.

Other services charge anywhere from $12 to $30. For instance, the Knoshbox, aimed at foodies, costs $30; Love With Food offers a monthly rate of $12; and Sprig offers a mini-snack plan of 10 to 13 items for $26.95.

Goodies, which is coming out of beta today, is being run entirely by @WalmartLabs, Walmart’s tech team in San Bruno, Calif. While it continues in the experiment phase (as evidenced by not using the Walmart brand yet), the employees at @WalmartLabs will curate and source the brands — even though Walmart stores represent the largest grocer in the country.

Ravi Raj, VP of products for @WalmartLabs, said they looked at the subscription space and decided it was ripe for innovation, particularly on one front: “Pricing aggressively.”

For example, the October Goodies box came loaded with a number of items, including a single-serving fruit snack, a delectable snack pack of Nutella spread with dipping sticks, and some more oddball items, like coconut-flavored chips and crunchy brownies that tasted like Oreos. Raj said that the box, which will have six to eight items every month, is actually worth closer to $15, or double what they are charging.

Goodies also has a marketplace, like most subscription services, where consumers can come back to order. It also has a social community, where subscribers can post reviews to earn loyalty points. The points will be redeemable for free boxes or to buy items in the marketplace in the future. Subscribers can also upload pictures or share recipes.

Goodies has been beta over the past few months, and Raj said half of the 3,000 customers were writing reviews, and a third of them wrote reviews for almost every item in the box. “That’s great market research for suppliers,” he said, which may be why a brand would want to participate. Another one is more sales: “One of the most frequently asked questions,” he said, “is where can I buy it?”

Nintendo’s President of North America, Reggie Fils-Aime, made the announcement this morning onstage in New York City.

There will be two configurations available. The regular set, in white, will cost $299.99, and will include the Wii console and the Wii U GamePad. It will have 8 GB of memory. The deluxe package, in black, costs $349.99 and will ship with 32 GB of capacity, a GamePad charging cradle and the game NintendoLand.

Nintendo also announced it will be offering a new video feature called Nintendo TVii at no additional cost. TVii will allow consumers to search for content across multiple subscription services, including Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Video, and stream content to the TV.

Fils-Aime confirmed that Nintendo will release the games NintendoLand and Super Mario U at the Nov. 18 launch, along with 50 other titles from partners including Electronic Arts, THQ, Disney, Warner Bros., Ubisoft, Activision and many others.

The Wii U was first unveiled more than a year ago at E3, where Nintendo surprised the industry with the first tablet-size controller for a videogame console. The hardware also represents a nice upgrade from the current generation, because it supports HD graphics and hardcore game play. It will be connected online to offer new social experiences, including video chat.

Nintendo’s new system will be the only new console launching this holiday season. Microsoft and Sony have not announced plans for launching new Xbox or PlayStation hardware.

The Wii U will launch nearly a month later in Japan on Dec. 8.

Deploying a new generation of algorithms, retailers are changing the price of products from toilet paper to bicycles on an hour-by-hour and sometimes minute-by-minute basis.

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Later this afternoon, Kayak is planning to sell 3.5 million shares at $22 to $25 each, to raise as much as $100 million, according to its latest document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But based on strong demand, the company could end up pricing its shares even higher, reports CNBC.

At the top of its current range, the company would be valued at nearly $1 billion.

Starting tomorrow, the online travel company will trade under the ticker symbol KYAK on the Nasdaq exchange.

Since the company first filed to go public last year, a lot has happened, making it difficult to gauge how it will be received by investors.

Across the broader technology sector, several tech companies have gone public in recent months, some faring better than others, like LinkedIn and Yelp versus Zynga and Groupon.

In the online travel business specifically, several big moves could value the company higher.

Google acquired ITA Software for $700 million to add travel airline information to its search results, and TripAdvisor spun off from Expedia to create two separately traded companies. Since then, both are trading at almost $48 a share, up from $27 at the time of the split.

As for Kayak, the wait also gave it the time to report four consecutive quarters of profitable growth.

In the first quarter, it reported a profit of $8.1 million, reversing a loss of $12 million in the same period a year earlier. (The loss was mostly attributable to a $15 million impairment charge related to the discontinuation of the SideStep brand name.) Revenue in the first quarter totaled $73.3 million, compared to $52.7 million a year earlier.

In Kayak’s online road show video, the company stressed that it’s not just another online travel agency, but a technology company. It believes it can out-innovate many other companies, because it isn’t busy managing call centers or flying planes.

But as a customer-facing service, why doesn’t it need call centers?

Kayak CTO and co-founder Paul English explained that customer inquiries are handled by engineers, connecting a very close bond between what they are creating and what the customers are saying about it. The complaints aren’t considered resolved until the bug is fixed on the site.

Maybe now that the company is going public, that’s how Kayak will take calls from shareholders, too?

Today, Yahoo reported fair to middling — although still predictably unspectacular — second-quarter earnings earlier today.

Now it’s time for its financial call with Wall Street analysts, which most notably will not include its spanking new CEO Marissa Mayer.

Giant, prolonged sigh, but not entirely unexpected, since she just got to the Silicon Valley Internet giant today. Of course, that did not stop former CEO Carol Bartz from hopping on right after she was hired and cussing up a storm.

That did not end so well for Bartz, so perhaps Mayer has already made one good decision. Minimize, minimize, minimize expectations!

Here we go:

2:04 pm: The call starts off with the tireless CFO Tim Morse, telling people that he was very excited about the new CEO, but that he could not talk about it much.

Bummer!

But there was a message from Marissa Mayer, though: She cares about investors and you will be hearing from her soon!

2:06 pm: Morse, the numbers guy goes right into the script reciting the meh numbers, which boil down to the fact that earnings were better than expected on lackluster revenue growth.

Getting that up will be Job #1 for the missing Mayer — you just know she is sitting at the table right now — who will have to pull some major rabbits out of the hat to get Yahoo back into the conversation.

That would be the good conversation — about how it is innovative — and not about the bad conversation about what a management goat rodeo it has been for far too long.

2:09 pm: Morse is still repeating what you could read in the press release.

But ho! Morse notes that the problems with Microsoft and its search partnership still has not gotten better and thank goodness for that guarantee. This one’s on the software giant, but it is still not good.

2:13 pm: Morse notes there will be no guidance until Mayer gets up to speed on the situation at Yahoo.

Let me give you the Cliff Notes version, Marissa: Revenue growth flat. Employee morale weak. Product innovation non-existent. Mobile — don’t make me cry. But you do have a video deal with Tom Hanks called “Electric City” that is launching today!

Yay! Except you are now not a media company now that former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn has gotten jacked.

But the Olympics are coming, as are the U.S. elections, so you might want to hold onto that media excellence at Yahoo for a little while longer.

2:17 pm: Morse finishes up the non-news script and we move into the Q&A.

He warns: No Marissa queries!

The Wall Street analysts behave on cue — they never fail me on not asking the tough questions — and ask about the weakness in advertising pricing rates.

Morse talks about weakness in Europe, but gives a non-answer.

2:18 pm: Next a question about the stock buyback that Yahoo announced to get its shares back up to speed, using money from its partial sale of its Alibaba assets.

It’s not working yet, given the stock has remained flat since forever.

A question on the advertising softness and comments on revenue per search. Good one!

Headwinds from broadband advertising! “We’ll have to live through it,” says Morse, which means when crappy comparisons will return to make the revenue fall-off seem less worse.

Onto declining engagement and declining search revenue. And a good query about what to do about Microsoft?

Perhaps another partner, like Google, to replace it? Actually, until Mayer was appointed yesterday, Yahoo execs were in talks with the search giant about various partnerships.

That’s presumably on hold for now, but we’ll see.

Yahoo has about nine months until the Microsoft guarantee falls off the cliff and Morse notes there is an out.

Tasty!

2:25 pm: I’ll be honest — I am getting hugely bored hearing non-news about yet another unremarkable performance from Yahoo.

I needs me some Mayer ASAP — since she is, without a doubt, a fantastic character for Yahoo’s next chapter. As has been reported, it’s correct that she is not talking to me so far, but I am sure there will be plenty of material for me to work with going forward.

The next question is on mobile, which is a “big priority” for Yahoo, says Morse. Actually, it has hardly be a priority at all, despite the fact that the kids seem to love their smartphones.

Another Alibaba question, which is in all the filings. Let me break it down: Yahoo owns less, but it’s still a good investment for the future.

2:33 pm: Did I tell you I am bored. I am at the offices of Vanity Fair magazine blogging this and I am now reading a very good book they have on the shelf here titled “Vanity Fair’s Hollywood.” Does Sophia Loren ever take a bad photo? No, she does not!

Back to Yahoo! A question if Mayer will be talking before the next earnings call.

“I honestly just don’t know,” says Morse. But she is “mindful” of how much investors want to get a good gander at her.

A question on Yahoo Japan, another endless asset sale that the company has not yet completed. “There really is no update,” says Morse, blaming a valuation gap.

What a shock!

Morse is being very polite today and I like it. He’s been through the wringer at Yahoo since he got there, including a short stint as a temporary CEO.

I hope you have been taking notes, Tim!

2:39 pm: A question on Facebook and, thankfully, on the choice of Mayer. I love when someone asks a question they have been asked not to ask.

“I don’t have a whole lot of color,” says Morse, noting her “resume speaks for itself.” It is apparently safe to say, adds Morse, that Yahoo has to be good at both tech and content.

You’re kidding! I had no idea! Thanks, polite Tim!

He also said Yahoo feels good about being on a steady footing with Facebook. Last call, the comments were about how much Yahoo was going to get Facebook to pay.

Bygones!

I am back to the shelf at Vanity Fair, which is as delightfully entertaining as this call is not. Now, I am perusing the book, “Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionaire.”

Did you know Sandra Bernhardt’s motto is: “Kiss ‘em, slap ‘em, send ‘em home.”

I am considering stealing that one as my new operating policy.

I missed the question about Yahoo’s ad consortium with AOL and Microsoft. “We’re making progress,” says Morse.

Aaaaagh. But did you also know that Katie Couric’s motto is: “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

That is definitely my motto too if Yahoo PR does not get back to me on my 26 questions from this morning (you would think I would have gotten used to this by now!).

How I wish Mayer was not in the corner right now and we were listening to her. She talks really quickly, like a supernova, so I would love to see how analysts react to it. Not today!

Did you know Keith Richards’ motto is: “I told you I was sick.”

Now that is funny.

There are no more questions, which is unusual, and Tim politely says his goodbyes and says to be in touch any old time.

Thus, I have to have a better ending for this and it comes via Donald Trump, whose motto is: “Think big and get the job done.”

And it’s a pretty good tip for Yahoo and Mayer going forward.

In the video below, the San Francisco-based start-up shows how a few lucky Uber users received the presidential treatment and got to ride yesterday in an “Ubercade,” which featured three Uber “Secret Service agents” and two Suburbans flanking their town car. The promotional stunt and the video are, no doubt, part of Uber’s campaign to show residents how slick the Uber experience can be, just as the city’s taxi commissioner has vocally opposed Uber’s operations there.

Uber, which launched in 2010, is now fully operational in six U.S. cities, and recently began testing its service in L.A. and Toronto. It’s also available in Paris.

Co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick didn’t respond to request for comment on the current state of affairs for Uber in Washington, D.C. But have a look to see how Uber, as the company put it, is “stepping up its game” in the District:

(Photo courtesy of Steve_P_NYC/Flickr)

But despite the fact that some customers were dismayed, Uber isn’t throwing in the towel on dynamic pricing. In fact, the company, which is usually very transparent about its surge pricing plans, is considering whether to raise fares regularly on weekends.

Could this be a Netflix-like moment for small start-up Uber, just as it’s trying to grow?

You’re probably thinking, and rightly so, that Netflix and Uber are two very different companies: Netflix is a 14-year-old public company that faces tough competition in a growing premium video-streaming market; as of the quarter ending Sept. 30, it had around 24 million subscribers. Uber is a 1-and-a-half-year-old start-up using a mobile phone application to create a marketplace that connects consumers with a limited number of town-car drivers. Netflix is available in the U.S., Canada and 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; Uber currently operates in six U.S. cities and in Paris. Subscribers pay a monthly fee to Netflix; Uber users pay per ride.

But Netflix provides a recent example of price adjustments that resulted in negative consumer reaction, to put it mildly. The company said last July that it was eliminating the option to combine DVD and streaming video services, and in doing so, hiked the price by 60 percent for consumers who wanted both options. Netflix’s stock plunged; the company later cut its guidance by one million subscribers, and eventually reversed its plans to offer a DVD-only service.

As Uber has explained a few times now, the sticker shock some customers experienced on New Year’s Eve was the result of surge pricing, which Uber has started putting into effect on nights when drivers might be busier than usual. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder and CEO, has pointed out that if Uber doesn’t make it worth its drivers’ while to be on the platform, there won’t be any drivers available.

When it comes to tech products and services, users often don’t react well to change — at first. Professionals and consumers alike become accustomed to a product, and some initially see change as disruptive to their productivity or proficiency in that tool. There’s also often a backlash when the change results in a threat — real or perceived — to privacy, as we’ve seen with reactions to Facebook’s ever-evolving settings.

But when the change ultimately costs users or subscribers something they can peg a dollar amount to — such as the Netflix price change, or as with last week’s Verizon Wireless convenience fee — the options being weighed become that much clearer for the consumer.

In other words: Should I stay, or should I go now?

Uber does not have to worry about shareholders, or FCC scrutiny. The number of complaints logged — 97 disgruntled users and 15 whose Uber apps on their smartphones might not have been working correctly — was a small percentage of the thousands of Uber rides that were booked on New Year’s Eve. It could be said that this is more of an Airbnb moment than a Netflix moment for Uber: A case of a small start-up needing to do a little damage control.

From a business perspective, Kalanick says, New Year’s Eve was still a success. Early-stage Uber investor Jason Calacanis tweeted that he “loves” Uber’s surge pricing, as it ensures availability. (Calacanis did not immediately respond to AllThingsD’s request for comment on his tweet.)

Love uber’s surge pricing as it helps drivers & ensures availability. 5x 3 days a year is ok by me. #angelinvestment http://t.co/v2XuLT80

January 1, 2012 6:44 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@Jason

Jason Calacanis

Another regular Uber user, SproutSocial CEO Justyn Howard, said he used Uber on New Year’s Eve, and noted that his car ride didn’t seem any different than usual. He said he believes Uber is especially good with data-driven strategy, and that supply-and-demand management will become easier for Uber over time. “Overall, I expect the feedback and data gathered from NYE will be put to good use,” Howard said.

Uber is currently refunding some unhappy customers, on a case-by-case basis.

But for Uber, and many other start-up companies, reaching the average consumer will be critical if it wants to grow into a bigger company. By working with town-car companies and not taxis — as some other app platforms do — and charging a $7 to $8 base fare for rides, Uber is already a company that delivers a premium service that not everyone can afford.

If Uber institutes dynamic pricing on regular weekend nights, the company could solve the problem of ensuring there are enough drivers willing to opt in to Uber’s app platform, but at the risk of losing out on customers that aren’t willing to pay two times or more the standard fare.

The tech-savvy crowd, after the initial sticker shock, might accept this.

The “normals,” however, will likely stand outside a little longer hailing taxi cabs — or find other means of getting around town.

(Image courtesy of Flickr/McSmith86)

The move to slash $200 and then $300 from the device’s retail price was evidently made to battle the Fire’s loss-leading $199 price. “Our understanding is that RIM was blindsided by Amazon pricing its Kindle Fire aggressively at $199,” says Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. “We estimate that the company is losing $50-$75 per PlayBook sold.”

And it may lose more in the future.

Remember, when RIM announced last week that worse-than-expected sales of its PlayBook tablet will cause it to fall short of financial targets for its third quarter, it said it must expand its “aggressive level of promotional activity” to drive PlayBook adoption. It also said it “now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers.”

The company filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission this morning, indicating that it intends to raise between $850 million and $1.15 billion in its public offering.

At the high end of the range, that would translate to roughly $150 million more than it had previously estimated it could raise.

The company is seeking to sell 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 a share and will reserve 15 million additional shares for extra demand. It expects to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZNGA.

Under the best circumstances, the company will be valued at nearly $7 billion based on 699.3 million shares outstanding. That falls below some of the rumored expectations that have been floating around over the past few weeks.

Still, at that value, it will come close to the public valuation of Electronic Arts, which hovers around $7.8 billion, but falls short of other game publishers, like Activision, which has a value of  $14 billion.

Zynga has made its riches off selling virtual goods in social games on Facebook. Some of its most recognizable titles include FarmVille, CityVille, Poker and Words With Friends.

Virtual goods often allow players to continue to play the game and level-up faster, such as an energy boost. They also can be decorative in nature, like an outfit for an avatar or seeds to plant on a farm. Of the roughly 230 million monthly active users, very few players ever bother making a purchase.

Since the beginning, the company has a very close relationship with Facebook, which has been contentious at times, especially since the platform started collecting a 30 percent tax on all virtual goods sold. More recently, the company has tried to expand to other platforms, including the launch of several games on mobile and Google+. It also has its own online game network in production.

The company’s IPO will be one of the largest tech offerings in recent memory.

In early November, Groupon raised $700 million including overallotments. It had originally sought to raise $750 million. Other recent tech IPOs include Angie’s List, Pandora and LinkedIn.

But some critics think Zynga is rushing its offering before a broad financial collapse. If it waited until reporting fourth-quarter results, it could paint a stronger growth story as it completes the busy holiday period.

The San Francisco company, which was founded in 2007, was named after Founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s dog named Zinga.

In 2010, Zynga recorded a profit of $27.9 million on revenues of $597.5 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it broke even on revenues of $828.9 million.

While its revenues continue to grow, the number of daily active users that play its games has fallen two quarters in a row and some critics question whether the company can keep up its aggressive growth.

In recent weeks, Pincus has come under harsh criticism for his heavy-handed leadership approach. But to his credit, he has overseen rapid growth, including the acquisition of dozens of smaller game studios. Today, his company has 2,500 employees.

At the mid-range of its expectations, Zynga will bring home proceeds of $889.4 million after selling shareholders take their winnings.

The primary purpose of the sale is to increase its visibility in the marketplace and create a market for its stock. Proceeds will go towards working capital, but also $83.6 million will be spent to satisfy tax withholding obligations related to stock of current and former employees. Additionally, it plans to use a portion of the proceeds for charitable causes through its Zynga.org initiative.

As part of the sale, the company will have three classes of shares. Class A stock will have one vote per share; Class B stock will have seven votes; and Class C will have 70 votes.

Pincus owns some Class B shares, and all of the company’s Class C shares. Following the offering, he will control 36.2 percent of the company’s voting power.

As Kara Swisher previously reported Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering.

No other executives have plans to sell stock, either. But a number of the company’s early investors will sell stock, including Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures. Other interesting names that made the list include Google, which will sell 1.7 million shares.

The company’s largest institutional holder, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which owns 11 percent of the shares, will not sell any of its stock in the offering either.

According to multiple sources close to the situation, Groupon plans to conduct its road show for investors next week, starting either on Monday or Tuesday.

While the decision to move forward could still change, it comes amid continued criticism of the Chicago-based daily deals company, which has had one of the rougher IPO processes for an Internet company in recent memory.

Just yesterday, the New York Times took aim at Groupon and its Wall Street bankers, retreading over the same list of issues, including controversial accounting, a too-large payout to its founders and issues around its marketing costs.

In addition, the social buying service has had some management turnover, with two COOs departing.

Lastly, it has amended its S-1 filing several times, for a variety of reasons, including an email to employees by its CEO Andrew Mason that struck regulatory agencies as a bit blabby.

That said, the initiation of the road show — where company execs will pitch its business to possible shareholders — might be an indication that Groupon’s results have improved in its recent quarter.

In the last quarter, the company lost $102.7 million on revenue of $878 million.

Also of concern is the stock market itself. Groupon, like several Web IPO candidates, had delayed its offering due to turbulent conditions.

Now, sources said, the company will go public on the Nasdaq exchange soon after the road show is complete and after pricing by its bankers.

That valuation will also be under scrutiny. Some had previously estimated that Groupon would have an IPO of up to $25 billion. Now it could be half that, sources said.

Well, we will presumably soon see, as Groupon plans to proceed.

The CGI imps at Next Media Animation of Taiwan are at it again, with their unusual take on the controversy over Netflix’s recent pricing changes and its splitting of its video streaming and DVD-by-mail business (now called Qwikster).

Somehow those two businesses are portrayed as mutant Siamese twins. I have no idea why, but it works.

Enjoy:

In addition to carrying one of Apple’s iconic smartphones, Richard is also the CEO of France Telecom, whose networks carry traffic from more iPhones than any other carrier except AT&T. France Telecom, with its Orange brands, sells the iPhone in 15 countries.

“They just created smartphones with the iPhone,” Richard said during an hourlong chat over breakfast in Downtown San Francisco last week. “Everybody should be grateful to them to have put such a product in our market.”

But, while he praises Apple, Richard is wary of the power that the company holds by having total say in which apps do and don’t get on its network.

Unlike with Android, where the carrier can largely configure phones the way it would like to, on Apple, the company has to settle for putting various services in the App Store. And, ultimately, it is Apple that controls what makes it into the App Store.

“Everybody is talking about net neutrality,” Richard said, but “net neutrality is not only dealing with pipes.”

“It also deals with management of application shops,” he said. “If you have people like Apple managing their application store and saying ‘This is OK and I don’t want to see this app in my shop,’ it’s a problem.”

In the interview, Richard offered a blunt take on a number of other key industry players and topics ranging from the need for variable pricing to the fates of Nokia and RIM.

Richard has been outspoken before, including calls last year for those flooding networks with data–companies like Apple and Google–to help pay some of the costs of making necessary network investments.

Though RIM and Nokia both face challenges, Richard said in our interview that he is glad that there are still a number of competing smartphone operating systems duking it out.

“For us we are quite happy with the existing landscape in terms of operating systems,” he said. “A world with 90 percent of Android-based devices would not be attractive for us, but we are far from that.”

Oh, and as for that report that France Telecom and Apple are working together on a standard for smaller SIM cards. That’s true, Richard said, and it’s a compromise designed to appease Apple’s desire for something smaller without resorting to a software-only virtual SIM card that Apple had initially been advocating.

Here were some of his more interesting comments from our conversation:

On the massive increase in mobile data use and the dangers that creates:

The real risk of everything is collapse. Nobody utters this loudly enough, but the real issue for the world is a collapse of the network or some local collapses.

We are the people with pipes. We are supposed to invest heavily in pipes in order to bring the capacity which is necessary to sustain the explosion of consumption and usage and data traffic in our networks. At the same time, the people that create this traffic…are not really incentivized to manage properly, globally, the traffic.

There is an unbalance in the overall system, which in our view is a major problem.

It is totally impossible to absorb such an explosion in traffic without first, clearly investing massively in spectrum and equipment, and second, without introducing some new pricing approaches.

On Microsoft-Nokia:

There are a lot of questions around Microsoft and Nokia–-capacity really to reverse the quite negative trend that they have in the market. It seems difficult, but we will see. We are still definitely in favor of seeing at least three or four big families of operating systems in the market. But it is true it is going to be difficult for them.

On RIM:

It’s not really declining. It’s still popular in Europe. They have customers and users that are quite faithful to them. It works more or less like a community of people. It’s often families that are big BlackBerry users, and of course companies.

They have had some quality problems in the recent period which is a concern, especially with the next generations of devices.

In my view as a customer, or as a partner of them, I think they really should fix very quickly their quality problems.

On Google and Android:

Android is, I think quite a solid and reliable operating system and doesn’t suffer with bugs. We have regularly problems with RIM. We have no problem with Apple and with Android. Let’s be frank and clear.

To me, the risk theoretically is more for Google to use releases–Android releases–as a weapon in their relationship with device manufacturers and indirectly with telcos than anything else. So far they have not really tried to do it.

On Apple and App Store openness:

Everybody is talking about Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is not only dealing with pipes. It also deals with management of application shops. If you have people like Apple managing their application store and saying “This is OK and I don’t want to see this app in my shop,” it’s a problem.

So far, we have been able to come to solutions with Apple people, even though they are a little tough….We are able to find solutions. We are not at war with the Apple guys. But it is true that it can be tough.

Of course Ideally we would like to have those services embedded natively in the handset which is what we do with Android-based devices like with Samsung or HTC or people like that. It is not possible with Apple. We still are in a position to bring those apps to our customers through the app stores, provided clearly we have access to the App Store.

The problem is the day when Apple says “I don’t want this one.”

Definitely if we face these kind of problems we will go to court. Because competition is not only something that should be applied to telcos and to carriers. For us it should be a principle for the whole Internet environment.

On working with Apple on smaller SIM cards:

As you probably know, Apple has been working for years on reducing the size of SIM cards because they need space in the phone. They even thought about a device without any SIM card, that is what is known as the e-SIM project.

All of us told them it was a bad idea because the SIM card is a critical piece of the security and authentication process. It would be very difficult for a telco or carrier to manage the customer relationship. I think that they understood this point. We had a very constructive exchange and dialogue with them.

We are going to work with them in order to standardize a new format of SIM which takes into accout our needs with security and authentication and also is compatible with their wishes in terms of size.

I understood that the next iPhone would be smaller and thinner and they are definitely seeking some space.

This is good evidence we can work properly with Apple people, Apple teams. In that particular case, we have been able to find, I think, a good answer which is good for everyone.

On Tablets:
To be honest, I am still a little skeptical of the size of the world market in tablets. First, I do think the iPad is very well ahead of the competition in terms of tablets. To me as a user and as a partner, there is the iPad and there is the rest.

I think there will be a world market for the iPad. What will be, really, the size of this market, is difficult to say, because in fact it is a new market.

In fact I think that in the future people will have several devices, several screens. Nobody knows what is the mix or the range of devices that we will have.

Now, the Mountain View, CA, start-up has added someone who might know a thing or two about it. Former Googler Elliot Schrage–who is now Facebook’s global communications, marketing and public policy head–is joining Pixazza’s board as a strategic adviser and observer.

Before joining both the Silicon Valley search giant and social networking powerhouse, Schrage had another thing in common with Pixazza–he also worked at retail behemoth The Gap, one of the companies that uses Pixazza’s technology tools.

“I’m impressed by Bob, Jim and the Pixazza team and delighted to have the chance to work with them,” said Schrage in an email to me.

The Pixazza network now reaches about 85 million unique visitors per month, according to Quantcast.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Here is Lisbonne’s blog post on the Schrage appointment, as well as the video of the interview I did with him recently:

Pixazza Is Now Friends with Elliot Schrage

One of many favorite lines I remember from Netscape’s CEO Jim Barksdale was “smart isn’t what you know, but how fast you learn.” The history of Silicon Valley demonstrates the wisdom of that adage when you consider that no company starts life with perfect knowledge; they all experiment, discover, and iterate rapidly. The best startups not only harness the knowledge of their employees, but look to their investors, advisors, and supporters as well.

Today, we feel particularly fortunate to welcome someone new to the Pixazza fold, a world class executive responsible for helping to expand the reach of two of the Internet’s premier companies. Elliot Schrage has agreed to join our board as a strategic advisor and observer.

Elliot’s current role as vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook, coupled with his previous experience as vice president of communications and public affairs at Google, make him an ideal resource as we work to change the way consumers interact with images on the Internet. In an auspicious coincidence, Elliot previously served as the senior vice president of global affairs at The Gap–one of Pixazza’s long time advertisers.

Pixazza is pioneering the use of images as a new canvas for delivering to consumers relevant information, ecommerce, and advertising. We look forward to collaborating with and learning from our new “friend” Elliot.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110324/facebook-communications-kingpin-joins-pixazza-board/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:50:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41827

Recently, BoomTown took a walk down digital Memory Lane with Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza, the photo-tagging service that has nicknamed itself “AdSense for images.”

That’s because Lisbonne used to be a big wheel at Netscape Communications, the iconic Internet browser company that truly changed the digital world–before crashing and burning in a very public way.

We talked about the old days, of course, but more about the new days and his business focused on putting all kinds of advertising within online images.

The Mountain View, CA, start-up–which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb– aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

At least that’s the hope.

Pixazza is selling itself as a win-win for online publishers–who certainly could use one.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Quite possibly annoying, but Pixazza is growing quickly anyway, with the company claiming 20 billion image views per year and reaching 70 million unique visitors a month on sites deploying its technology.

There are rivals in the space, of course, such as GumGum and Vibrant, but Pixazza does come armed with $18 million in venture funding, as well as that relationship with Google.

Here’s Lisbonne talking about it all in a video interview I did at Pixazza’s Silicon Valley HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/heres-the-texas-ags-letter-demanding-googles-search-policies-and-ad-rate-formulas/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/heres-the-texas-ags-letter-demanding-googles-search-policies-and-ad-rate-formulas/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:14:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57901 The antitrust investigation Google is facing in Texas is quite a bit broader than originally thought. A civil investigative demand sent last July by the office of Attorney General Greg Abbott, and first reported by Bloomberg, reveals an inquiry not just into ad pricing, but site ranking and “the manual overriding or altering of” search results as well.

The 13-page CID includes 39 different requests for documents ranging from those setting forth Google’s policies and procedures for calculating AdWords prices and minimum bids to minutes and agendas from search quality team meetings and records of the “black listing” or “white listing” of specific Web sites. Also requested: Documents that “describe, analyze, or discuss competition for advertisers from Bing and Yahoo” and others concerning the strategy for e-commerce services like Froogle and Google Shopping.

It’s an extraordinarily thorough set of demands and shows the Texas AG to be reviewing not just Google’s ranking of search results and setting of advertising prices, but questioning whether the company favors its own businesses and advertisers in results. Has Google complied with them? That’s not yet clear, though company spokesman Adam Kovacevich says discussions with Abbott’s office continue.

“Since we started Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry, and while there’s always going to be room for improvement, we’re committed to competing fair and square,” he said. “We’re continuing to work with the Texas attorney general’s office to answer their questions and understand any concerns.”

Texas_GOOG_CID –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110216/heres-the-texas-ags-letter-demanding-googles-search-policies-and-ad-rate-formulas/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:51:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57612 It might lack a firm launch date and hard pricing details, and its application and content ecosystem might need further work, but Hewlett-Packard’s forthcoming TouchPad looks like it’s got a real shot at becoming the frontrunner in the massing horde of tablet hopefuls trailing Apple’s iPad.

Certainly the hardware and OS seem formidable enough to at least differentiate the device in an increasingly crowded market. And if HP’s integration story proves to be as good in practice as it sounded on stage in San Francisco yesterday (printers, phones, PCs and tablets all connected via webOS), the TouchPad could mount a decent challenge to the iPad–even if it doesn’t arrive at market until after the debut of the iPad 2.

Though he feels the summer ship date is just too late, Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes was impressed by the TouchPad’s hardware and OS. “[The TouchPad] appears to have very good software and syncing capabilities (HP Synergy feature) and some promising features,” he said in a client note today. “Also we point out that HP is clearly still investing not just in tablets but its smartphone business, which provides a good link between products for the future. Along with a nice OS, we believe that HP’s channel strength, link to its printing franchise, and overall brand strength could enable it to be one of the few relevant tablet players far behind Apple over the long-term.”

J.P. Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz had good things to say as well. “Our initial take on the TouchPad: better than expected,” he said. “Beyond Apple’s iPad, we previously had not been impressed with the other tablet entrants. HP’s TouchPad moderately changes this view.”

Interstingly, Moskowitz doesn’t seem quite as concerned about the device’s launch date. His feeling is that with the TouchPad, HP isn’t taking on Apple as much as it is the conga line of vendors chasing it. “For HP,” he said, “we believe the initial mission is to capture meaningful share among the non-iPad tablets, i.e., Android and Windows-based devices.”

Which is an interesting way of looking at the company’s strategy. Perhaps HP isn’t trying to out iPad the iPad–it’s trying to out iPad the iPad’s imitators, a far less daunting task.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110203/chances-are-youre-paying-way-more-for-mobile-than-you-need-to/ http://allthingsd.com/20110203/chances-are-youre-paying-way-more-for-mobile-than-you-need-to/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:24:34 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57136 Does your wireless plan suit your needs? Truly suit your needs? Because if it doesn’t, you’re potentially wasting hundreds of dollars. According to a yearlong BillShrink survey of more than 230,000 wireless users, people waste an average of $336 annually by miscalculating their voice and data needs. And in doing so, they unnecessarily hand an estimated $79 million to their carriers.

A few key findings from the survey:

• People estimate they need 711 wireless anytime minutes per month, but in truth they need quite a bit less. BillShrink found 651 minutes to be the average.
• The average person uses 1,555 text messages per month, yet most consumers believe they use 2,566. (1,555 per-month is the average!?!)
• People assume they need 54MB of data per month, yet most need 81MB. Ironically, most tiered carrier plans start at 150MB.

What’s driving these disparities? Consumers’ skewed perception of their wireless needs, obviously. But the carriers are to blame too. Their tiered pricing plans might offer more choice, but they also make it tougher to assess our voice, text and data needs, and make it quite a bit easier to overpay for them.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110203/chances-are-youre-paying-way-more-for-mobile-than-you-need-to/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:43:44 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3207 Twitter data is a hot commodity for all sorts of projects, including search, brand monitoring and customer relationship management. But pricing and access to its data is not something the company has prioritized. Starting today, one much-clamored-for Twitter data option has been made available: Filtering the full, ever-growing real-time Twitter data set for keywords on a per-tweet basis. Gnip, Twitter’s only official data reseller, will give customers access at a cost of 10 cents per thousand tweets in a new joint product called “Power Track.”

For back story, Twitter has for the last year sold access to its “Firehose” real-time stream of every tweet to companies like Google and Microsoft. It gives other developers access to a random sampling of tweets (a.k.a. the “Gardenhose” and “Spritzer.”) Then in November it gave Gnip permission to sell more precise sampler products like the Decahose (10 percent of tweets for $5,000 per month).

But many companies, especially social media monitors, would rather get just the relevant tweets from the total data set. With Gnip’s Power Track they’ll be able to avoid Twitter’s polling rate limits and get exactly what they want, for a fee.

As for the actual Twitter users slaving away to produce those 140 character updates? No, they don’t get a cut.

This story was updated to correct Power Track pricing.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110131/microsoft-takes-another-stab-at-selling-its-own-ads-by-getting-someone-else-to-do-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20110131/microsoft-takes-another-stab-at-selling-its-own-ads-by-getting-someone-else-to-do-it/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 11:00:53 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28878 It’s about time! Or, more accurately, “real time”: It’s taken Microsoft several years to get its head around the idea, but the company is finally going to start selling its ad space via a “real-time bidding” exchange, just as Google does.

The difference: Instead of running the exchange itself, as Google does, Redmond is going to outsource the work.

In February, ad tech start-up AppNexus will begin selling Microsoft’s “non-premium” display ads via its own exchange. And Microsoft will essentially pull the plug on AdECN, the exchange it bought in 2007 but only began testing a year ago.

If you’re not remotely interested in advertising technology, here’s the takeaway: Lots of smart people predict that display advertising will be moving to “real time bidding,” which allows buyers and sellers to set the price of a single ad impression in milliseconds.

That efficiency makes plenty of sense from a buyer’s perspective, but it will inevitably chip away at publishers’ pricing power–which is one reason big sellers like Microsoft haven’t embraced it yet.

Microsoft sort of announced the move last October, when it participated in a $50 million investment in AppNexus. Microsoft and AppNexus have been deliberately playing down the move, for reasons I can’t quite fathom–it’s not as if players like Google haven’t picked up on it.

(And that Microsoft-AppNexus connection may or may not have had something to do with a falling-out between AppNexus and Google last year.)

In any case, it’s now formalized: Microsoft will throw all of its unsold inventory into an exchange that AppNexus will power, starting with ad space on Windows Live Hotmail. Then it will add in all of the inventory on MSN properties, and eventually ads from third-party publishers that Microsoft is working with, like Viacom.

Which doesn’t mean Google will be quaking in its boots.

At the start, AppNexus figures it will be moving more than 10 billion ad impressions a month through the exchange, which sounds like a lot. And it is! But Google’s AdX is many times larger–it’s a safe bet that it’s doing more than one billion impressions a day, and likely much more.

Still, Google’s giant lead isn’t necessarily insurmountable. For starters, the universe of display advertising is much more fragmented than search. So no matter how much inventory AdX picks up, there’s always going to be lots of ad space that Google doesn’t get its hands on.

And because Google’s so big, there’s a very deliberate effort by lots of buyers and sellers to make sure they have other options. So underdog Microsoft–I can’t get over how odd it is to type that–will get at least a look-see for quite some time.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110131/microsoft-takes-another-stab-at-selling-its-own-ads-by-getting-someone-else-to-do-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/verizon-earnings-fall-short-as-company-confirms-30-unlimited-data-plan-for-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/verizon-earnings-fall-short-as-company-confirms-30-unlimited-data-plan-for-iphone/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:45:48 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=2906 Verizon’s earnings report on Tuesday was closely watched, in large part for any hints about the impending arrival of the iPhone to the company’s wireless service.

The numbers themselves were lackluster, with Verizon Communications reporting per-share earnings, excluding pension and other items, of 54 cents on revenue of $26.4 billion. The earnings were a penny short of expectations, Bloomberg said, with revenue about in line with what analysts predicted. After initially dipping, Verizon shares were trading recently at $36.35, up about 3 percent.

Once again, though, much attention focused on the Verizon iPhone, which goes on sale next month.

Ahead of the company’s earnings conference call, Verizon Chief Operating Officer Lowell McAdam told The Wall Street Journal that the company would offer a $30 unlimited data plan, similar to what it offers for other phones.

“I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot,” he told the Journal. AT&T used to offer a similar plan, but switched to usage-based pricing for new customers last year; plenty of the subscribers that Verizon is courting, however, have been able to keep their unlimited plan with AT&T.

Verizon has announced it will sell the iPhone at prices similar to what AT&T charges for the iPhone, so its service pricing has been one of the big remaining unknowns. Verizon is also likely to charge an extra fee for customers who want to take advantage of the device’s ability to act as a wireless hotspot. AT&T’s iPhone doesn’t have such a feature.

The iPhone also impacted Verizon in other ways last quarter, McAdam said, noting that it appeared to hold back subscriber growth, although the company did add some 870,000 new customers.

“It wasn’t what I hoped it would be,” he told the Journal.

Verizon’s earnings report suggests an opportunity to sell some iPhones to its existing customer base; only about a quarter of its contract subscribers have smartphones.

The company said it expects that, with the addition of the iPhone and devices running on its new LTE network it expects that number to roughly double this year, with smartphone penetration accounting for more than half of customers by year-end.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Verizon to iPhone Users: You Will Buy The $30-Per-Month, Unlimited Data Plan and You Will Like It
• Verizon iPhone to Debut With Unlimited Data Plan

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110125/verizon-earnings-fall-short-as-company-confirms-30-unlimited-data-plan-for-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/tool-for-creating-iphone-and-android-games-now-speaks-windows-as-well-as-macs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/tool-for-creating-iphone-and-android-games-now-speaks-windows-as-well-as-macs/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:30:11 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=2896 Corona, a tool for creating games that can be played on both Android and iOS devices, is getting even more versatile.

Until now, the software development tool has worked only on Macs. However, its creator plans to announce on Tuesday that Corona work can now be done on Windows machines as well.

Corona has been used to create games such as Doodle Dash (now called Tilt Monster) and Bubble Ball–a physics game created by a 14-year-old Utah boy that has risen to the top of free games in the App Store.

Moving Corona to Windows should open it up to more developers, according to its maker, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ansca Mobile.

“We’re excited to finally bring the power of Corona SDK to the Windows operating system,” CEO Walter Luh said in a statement. “Windows’ vast number of users will clearly mean a larger Corona SDK community and ecosystem, but more importantly, we think Corona SDK will play a big role in making mobile development much more popular and accessible.”

However, although the Windows program can be used to finalize Android games, iOS games still have to be compiled on a Mac because Apple requires the use of its Mac-only Xcode tool. Also, the new Windows version is still classified as a beta.

Ansca Mobile is also changing the pricing for Corona. It will remain free while programs are in development. Programmers who want to use the tool for only Android or iOS development can now do so for $199 per year, while the pro account for publishing to both platforms will remain priced at $349 a year.

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