Yoichi Wada's Final Fantasy: 96 million and counting
Yoichi Wada is kind of greedy. His company, Square Enix, has shipped more than 96 million copies of its Final Fantasy games since 1987. But he wants people to buy more, more, more. On March 8, the Japanese company began selling Final Fantasy XIII, the latest edition in the long-running role-playing game. This title has a lot more action in it and loads of movie-like animations in between the fighting sequences. But it remains true … Continue Reading
Real-time search engine OneRiot makes it ads more mainstream
Real-time search startup OneRiot is making its content ads fit in with industry standards, as it pushes for broader distribution across the web.
It’s launching ad units today that match Interactive Advertising Bureau guidelines (see right). Before, partners had to integrate OneRiot’s raw data feed and design their own user interface for the ads, so that was a natural barrier to widespread adoption.
The company’s ads usually have links to recently published content related to … Continue Reading
RealGames hires execs to pivot into social gaming
RealNetworks‘ game division has hired two new executives as part of a push into social games.
The Seattle-based group said today it appointed Wilf Russell as chief technology officer and Jeffrey Revoy as vice president of social games.
The moves are part of the company’s attempt to adapt its business, which has struggled to keep pace with the changes in the game industry. RealNetworks still plans to spin off RealGames into an independent company sometime … Continue Reading
NComputing's Numo chip could drive desktop computer costs to zero
It’s a tantalizing thought. The cost of destkop computing hardware is moving toward zero. Stephen Dukker, chief executive of NComputing, is moving that idea a step closer to reality today as he announces a new chip called Numo.
Of course, we don’t really mean zero. We just mean really really really cheap compared to today’s costs. Numo is a chip that integrates all of the desktop virtualization hardware that the company has created in its … Continue Reading
VC wisdom: Be a missionary, not a mercenary
It’s hard enough to catch a venture capital company’s eye, but convincing them to give you funding is even harder. Beth Seidenberg, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, runs down the five metrics she uses to decide which companies will get money in this lecture given at Stanford University. As it often does, it comes down to leadership – and while passion is critical, you need to be able to communicate that clearly.… Continue Reading
Twitter's commercial accounts may finally land at Chirp conference next month
Commercial accounts for businesses on Twitter may finally make their debut next month at the company’s inaugural developer conference, Chirp.
Twitter’s head of product management and monetization, Anamitra Banerji, will be leading a session on commercial accounts in the afternoon at the conference. Last summer, co-founder Biz Stone told us the company was planning to launch a commercial layer over its ecosystem by year-end. They’re several months behind, but it looks like it may finally … Continue Reading
Gift card swapping startup Plastic Jungle raises $7.4M
Plastic Jungle, a site where you can sell unwanted gift cards or buy those cards at a discount, has raised $7.4 million in a second round of funding.
I actually wrote about new site with a similar idea called CardPool just a few hours ago. Both CardPool and Plastic Jungle are part of a larger category of gift card marketplaces, which also includes Swapagift. One of Plastic Jungle’s more attractive features is the ability to … Continue Reading
YouTube founder pushed for growth "through whatever tactics, however evil"
Steve Chen, co-founder of the wildly successful video sharing site YouTube, sold the site to Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. No doubt he’s since internalized Google’s “Don’t be evil” ideology, at least as a talking point. But in January of that year, Chen’s thinking was exactly the opposite. In the text of an instant message to a YouTube product manager, he used the e-word.
Here’s the quote from a court brief filed by … Continue Reading
SXSW wrap-up: Maybe it really does suck now
San Franciscans complain that Burning Man used to be better. New Yorkers claim that everything used to be better. While it’s no surprise that some attendees of the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference this past week in Austin, Texas, deemed SXSW to be “over” compared to previous years, what’s interesting is the why. The complainers cited three major themes.
Bigger event
This year’s Interactive portion of SXSW (there are also separate multi-day events around … Continue Reading
Microsoft rumored to allow external USB storage on Xbox 360s
Microsoft is preparing a software update that will allow Universal Serial Bus (USB) mass storage devices to be used with the Xbox 360, according to a report by Joystiq.
This will allow gamers to store and load saved games via external USB storage devices. Until now, users had to use Microsoft Xbox 360 hard drives or flash memory units, also from Microsoft. The change is supposed to happen with a software update this spring.
Joystiq … Continue Reading
Stealthy energy startup Cyanto lands $1M
Cyanto, a mysterious energy startup based in San Carlos, Calif., has brought in $1 million of a targeted $2.2 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC.… Continue Reading
Stonetrip's 3D game engine will bring high-quality games to Android phones
French company Stonetrip announced today that it has created tools to help developers create cool 3D games and apps on Google Android phones.
The ShiVa 3D engine for Android will be released in a couple of weeks. The engine is a software platform that lets 3D games run on Android phones. It will compete with Unity Technologies, whose Unity 3D game engine is used to make a lot of games that run on the iPhone, … Continue Reading
Four ways to make money "selling" free mobile apps
The mobile app market is heating up, both for paid and free apps. And we’re seeing numerous app developers and content publishers jumping into the market every day looking to make money on this opportunity. If you can get consumers to pay for your app, great. But with all the free apps already available for smartphones and tablet devices such as Apple’s upcoming iPad, many newcomer apps will likely have to be free, too, in … Continue Reading
Open source video company Kaltura joins with Wikimedia to promote HTML5 video
Kaltura, developer of an open source video platform, has joined with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Open Video Alliance to launch two initiatives to promote HTML5 video on the web.
HTML5 is the latest revision of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the programming language that makes up most of the web. It’s being looked at as a challenger to Adobe Flash in many ways, since it allows for web animations and video without the use of … Continue Reading
Gift card marketplace CardPool pays users to recommend friends
CardPool, a new startup incubated by Y Combinator, helps users get money for gift cards that they don’t want. Now it’s also offering a financial incentive for those users to recruit their friends.
The concept behind San Francisco-based CardPool is pretty straightforward. It acts as the middleman between people who want to unload unwanted cards and people interested in buying them for a discount. The site says it pays sellers up to 90 percent of … Continue Reading
Ringcube takes in $10M to virtualize enterprise systems
RingCube Technologies, maker of operating system virtualization software that facilitates more portable computing, has brought in $10 million, according Dow Jones VentureWire. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company is backed by New Enterprise Associates and Mohr Davidow Ventures.… Continue Reading
Viacom thought YouTube would have made a 'transformative acquisition'
Well before media conglomerate Viacom sued Google for $1 billion in damages over copyright infringement in 2007, the media conglomerate thought that video-sharing site YouTube would have made a “transformative acquisition” for the company, according to court briefs released today. (The briefs are here, here and here.)
Only once YouTube fell into the hands of Google for close to $1.8 billion in 2006 did Viacom turn around and take serious action. But the relationship remained … Continue Reading
Smartling lands $4M, continues frenzy of web translation
It looks like competition among translation startups is heating up, with a number of companies popping up making substantial announcements in the last few months. Smartling, a startup that helps businesses to better use their websites by speaking to customers in their native language in real time, announced today it has secured a first round of funding for $4 million.
Smartling is one of many services targeting internet companies looking to do global business. The … Continue Reading
BioShock 2: Great game hurt by a special trick that is too powerful and addictive
At a certain point in BioShock 2, I figured out what I needed to do to win the video game. I had to hypnotize the enemies so that they would shoot each other and not me. It’s a fun trick to play, but it wound up ruining the game in a lot of ways. It made finishing the game too easy.
Don’t get me wrong. I just finished the game and loved the experience. I … Continue Reading
Amazon releases Kindle ebook reader application for Macs
Amazon has finally released a version of its Kindle ebook reading software for the Mac. The company previously released a Kindle app for the iPhone a year ago, and has plans for an iPad version of the software as well.
The free Kindle for Mac includes all of the features that you would expect: You can buy and read books from Amazon’s Kindle Store, access your library of previously purchased Kindle books, synchronize your bookmarks … Continue Reading
