VentureBeat

Quotes from Sid Meier’s keynote GDC speech

Veteran game designer Sid Meier delivered the keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference today and during his hour-long session on the “Psychology of Game Design: Everything you Know is Wrong,” the creator of the Civilization franchise produced a series of key points, mantras, and worthwhile quotes captured here. Meier is the creative director at Firaxis and director of this fall’s Civilization V. (You can catch the full news story here.)

“Gameplay is a psychological... Continue Reading

Decision engine Hunch raises $10M (report)

Hunch.com, the startup co-founded by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, has raised $10 million in a second round of funding, according to AllThingsDigital. Citing unidentified sources, the report says the funding was led by Khosla Ventures, with Khosla’s Gideon Yu (who was formerly chief financial officer at Facebook and YouTube) handling the deal.

A company spokeswoman declined to comment, except to say that she’ll let us know “if/when we do have a funding-related announcement.”

Hunch, based... Continue Reading

Despite advances, LED market probably volatile for two more years

Unquestionably, the major obstacle for indoor, or household-friendly light-emitting diodes is price. No matter how long a bulb lasts, nobody wants to spend $30 on one light. Exacerbating the situation, there are too many competing uses for LEDs, according to electronics market research firm iSuppli, slowing their development for home use.

Back-lighting for televisions is a huge growth market for LEDs, with 2.5 million LED-lit sets manufactured in 2009, and an estimated 25 million to... Continue Reading

Nissan gets 56K pre-orders for Leaf EV, challenges Tesla

Nissan says it has more than 56,000 pre-orders for the Leaf, its fully-electric model set to be released to the mass market in 2012. Just last November, the Nissan-led Electrification Coalition lobbied the U.S. government to fund electric vehicle projects. CEO Carlos Ghosn plans to sell the Leaf to fleet first to operators like taxi companies and governments as well. By 2013, Nissan will build a half million Leaf vehicles globally, he told BusinessWeek.

For... Continue Reading

Pike Research: Energy managment market still largely unexplored

Despite everything the U.S. Department of Energy, President Barack Obama and common sense say, energy efficiency just isn’t very sexy. Energy management systems have fantastic rates of return — saving thousands, if not millions. And Cash upfront for installation yields much lower energy bills in the future. But energy management systems are still only penetrating 14 percent of the potential market, according to a new report from Pike Research.

For context, energy management systems do... Continue Reading

Facebook turns out to be a pretty good friend to Foursquare, Hitwise data shows

Facebook may not turn out to be so much of a Foursquare killer.

In fact, the world’s largest social network drives the largest share of the location-based game’s web traffic, accounting for 33 percent of all upstream visits last week, according to web research firm Hitwise. Google follows closely behind, with a 22 percent share, and then Twitter clocks in at 8 percent.

Foursquare, the location game from Dodgeball creator Dennis Crowley,... Continue Reading

YouTube’s live sports broadcast deal is watershed moment for online video

YouTube is taking a major step today with its first live sports broadcast deal. It will be streaming live the Indian Premier League Championships. Such live broadcast deals have hitherto been the bastion of traditional pay TV operators. The Google-owned site signed an agreement with the organizers back in January and retains rights for two seasons.

The IPL is a tournament of a short-form of cricket that has become extremely popular in the last couple... Continue Reading

Twitter helps spread Formspring.me hoax

Twitter is abuzz today with a story attributed to popular news wire service The Associated Press. The new trending topic spotlights Formspring.me, a social network that lets users create profiles to post and answer questions anonymously, and its CEO, who was supposedly arrested two days ago for an elaborate scheme to release private customer information to the public on April 1.

But the story was just dubbed a hoax by news site The Inquisitr, which points out numerous... Continue Reading

LG Chem does its part to resuscitate Michigan with new battery factory

Michigan is taking a lot of hits lately. Not only is its traditional automotive industry winding down, but new electric car companies are being lured elsewhere too, despite state efforts. Its one ray of hope has been the advanced battery business, with $300 million in tax cuts successfully attracting major companies to the region. Today, that ray just got a bit brighter, with Korea’s LG Chem announcing plans to open a $303 million battery cell... Continue Reading

GamesBeat@GDC: Booyah’s Keith Lee describes rapid growth of real-world location gaming (video)

Location-based gaming in the real world is a hit with gamers and a broader community of mobile app users. Booyah’s Keith Lee has learned that with the rapid growth of his company’s MyTown app on the iPhone.

Lee was one of the speakers at our GamesBeat@GDC panel on disruptive innovation.

He said MyTown has grown to more than 1.3 million players in a short time, making it the most popular game that takes into account... Continue Reading

Game guru Sid Meier explains gamer psychology

Sid Meier knows how gamers think. He has been making hit games such as Civilization for decades. Today at the Game Developers Conference, he shared his insights on gamer psychology and how he has had to change his assumptions about how players behave. More often than not, he said, players just don’t act logically.

Early on, Meier learned that players are egomaniacs. If you want to create a civilization that rules the world, you’re by... Continue Reading

Threadbox launches slick new real-time collaboration tool (invites)

About a month ago, email assistant startup Cc:Betty renamed itself Threadbox and said it was rebuilding the product into a more work-focused collaboration tool. At 5pm Pacific today, users will get a chance to try out the new app, as Threadbox enters an invite-only beta testing phase.

Previously, Cc:Betty was supposed to help users organize email conversations and find the important content like documents and locations. You sent emails into the system by cc’ing “betty@ccbetty.com.”... Continue Reading

Plastic Logic delays Que eBook reader until summer

Plastic Logic announced today that it will have to delay the release of its hotly anticipated Que eBook reader until this summer. The company was originally aiming for a mid-April release.

It’s an inopportune time to announce such a big delay, considering that Apple just opened up preorders for the iPad today. Plastic Logic’s CEO Richard Archuleta said the delay is necessary to “fine-tune the features and enhance the overall product experience”, according to... Continue Reading

Sonos scores $25M round for its wireless home music systems

Santa-Barbara-based Sonos sells wireless multi-room home music systems. They’re kind of pricey, but they work at least as well as trying to hook all your computers together with iTunes. Plus you don’t have to stop the music to reboot your PC.

Sonos, founded in the Wi-Fi-crazy days of 2003, has survived the intervening bad years and emerged with a new round of funding: $25 million led by Index Ventures, which has added VC Mike Volpi... Continue Reading

GamesBeat@GDC: Norwest’s Tim Chang wants to invest in the “game-ification” of life (video)

Tim Chang, principal at Norwest Venture Partners, spoke about where he wants to put his firm’s venture money in the game business on a panel at the GamesBeat@GDC conference on Wednesday.

Part of the discussion focused on “game-ification,” or using the techniques of game design to get people more interested in non-game applicaitons. Investors aren’t just looking to fund game makers, or even new technologies — they are looking ahead to the application of gaming... Continue Reading

Apple iPad preorders are a go, limit two per customer

Early this morning, Apple finally opened the floodgates for iPad preorders. You can preorder the tablet at the Apple online store for free home delivery on its launch day, April 3. You can also choose to reserve an iPad for pickup at an Apple store on April 3.

The iPad starts at $499 for the 16GB model with Wi-Fi, and there’s also a 32GB model available for $599, and a $699 64GB version. If you... Continue Reading

FunTweet spices up your Twitter streams with visuals

The saying a picture is worth a thousand words just got another real-world illustration. FunMobility, a mobile content community, today announced the launch of FunTweet, a website that adds a visual component to tweets that are related to the text.

FunTweet is a simple idea, but one that could become popular as people look to spice up their tweets. By visiting the website, a user can type in a key word or their own Twitter username.... Continue Reading

GamesBeat@GDC: Disruption turns video games upside down (video)

Disruption 2.0 was the theme at our GamesBeat@GDC conference about the business of innovation in the video game industry. We had a great crowd and it was standing-room only for many of the presentations. We’re grateful to everybody who came and our speakers as well.

By way of thanks, we’re posting the opening video that we played at the conference, where key luminaries of games shared their thoughts on what disruption means for the... Continue Reading

OnLive to offer game portal with free demos in addition to paid game service

OnLive keeps rolling out news for its games on demand service. On Wednesday, the company announced it would launch its server-based game service on June 17. And today the company said it will launch a game portal web site that will offer game demos for free.

Steve Perlman, chief executive of OnLive said tonight at his company’s after-party at the Game Developers Conference that OnLive Game Portal will be a free companion to the OnLive... Continue Reading